388: The Year of the Headset
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From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 388.
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My name is Myke Hurley, I'm joined by Jason Snell.
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This episode is brought to you by Bombas, Fitbot, and DoorDash.
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Happy New Year, Jason.
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- Happy New Year, Myke. We're back.
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We're here. It's 2022.
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I don't know how this happened. Who allowed this to happen?
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- Sorry, it was my fault.
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- Oh. Are you Father Time?
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- Uh-huh, I have a #snowtalk question for you from Sims,
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and Sims wants to know, Jason,
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what did you do to ring in the new year?
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- Oh boy, nothing that interesting.
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Watched some movies as is traditional,
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watched some TV shows as is not traditional.
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We cut the cord, and what I found is that
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some combination of having fewer channels to watch
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and also the complete lack of
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New Year's Eve coverage on TV
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that is fun to like count down the new year.
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It was all bad.
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It was all really bad stuff.
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I wanted to just put on a thing that was like light,
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you know, jollity and japes for the new year
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as we counted down.
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I really wanted something from like a ballroom
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in London or something.
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And instead it was just like people gyrating in Miami
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and people gyrating in Times Square
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who were freezing to death and it was not that interesting.
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So, yeah, so the televised entertainment part
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wasn't that good at the end.
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So we just kind of shut it all down,
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waited for the new year to arrive and said,
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"Happy new year."
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And then we went to bed.
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And that was actually, you know what I did?
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Let me rephrase this now
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to what Sims is really not expecting,
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which is, you know what I did to ring in the new year?
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I checked to see that all the scripts that I had written
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for my weather station
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that I tried to intuit would break on January 1st
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unless I was careful, actually worked after midnight.
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I ran them all to see.
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And the answer is no, they were broken.
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So I fixed those scripts
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'cause I didn't do something right in them.
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I was very clever.
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I was aware it was gonna be a problem,
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but I fixed it the wrong way.
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And then I fixed them and then they worked.
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And then I went to bed.
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That was, in the end,
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that was how I rang in the new year is
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I fixed my own particular Y2K22 issue.
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- And then I went to sleep.
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- Very nice.
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We watched "Queer Eye."
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- All right, that's nice.
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- The news season, oh my God, it's so good.
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- We did "When Harry Met Sally,"
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which is kind of a New Year's Eve tradition for us.
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We did not get to the Marx Brothers this year.
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Lauren was like, "I feel like we just watched 'Duck Soup.'"
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And I said, "Well, we didn't.
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"We watched it exactly a year ago."
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She's like, "Well, I don't wanna watch it again."
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And which led me down a rabbit hole
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where I found that a night of the opera,
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which is maybe the best Marx Brothers movie,
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is, other than "Duck Soup" perhaps,
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has just got a restoration and came out on Blu-ray.
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So I ordered that on Amazon.
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That's one of the things I did to ring in the new year,
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is order a Marx Brothers movie from whatever, 90 years ago.
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But yeah, that was, it's, you know, stay up,
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watch some stuff, have a nice time.
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I had a big bottle of Lambic beer that we opened.
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You know, it's married people New Year's
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in the time of Omicron, I suppose.
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- Thank you to Sims for that question.
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If you would like to send in something to help us
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open an episode of the show,
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just send out a tweet with the hashtag Snow Talk
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or use question mark Snow Talk
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in the Relay FM members Discord.
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I have a few items of follow up for you, Jason Snow.
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- I wanted to just say that I watched No Time to Die
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over the break, the James Bond movie.
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- Ah, you found time.
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- I found time to--
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- No time to die.
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- It was incredible.
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I would have included it on my Upgrades nominations.
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- Ah, so the Upgradients were right, is what you're saying.
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- It was so good, so good.
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It's just a great movie and it's an especially great movie
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for a James Bond fan.
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It was really, really great.
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- And Daniel Craig is the best.
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- I haven't seen the last two James Bond movies,
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which is funny 'cause I've seen all of them.
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- I hadn't either.
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I hadn't seen Spectre.
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So we watched Spectre and then No Time Today.
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Recommend. - I'll get to it.
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- Big recommend. - All right.
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- Mella, the M-E-L-A, Mella. - Yes.
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- The recipe app, the library sharing that we spoke about.
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- Oh, that's now public?
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- It's out now, yep. - Oh, good.
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- So yeah, I immediately enabled that
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and now I'm able to use it with all of the shared recipes
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that Indina and I have.
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'cause she had kind of gone in and added a bunch of stuff
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and I didn't wanna have to go and do the same, right?
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'Cause she was using paprika
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and moved from paprika to mela.
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And yeah, I love it.
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I've been putting some cocktail recipes in there.
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- Yeah, I wanna get a bunch of them.
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We've got, in one of our shelves,
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we've got a big stack of recipes
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that are like cards from meal services
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and printouts of things and all of that.
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and I really would like to get them in there
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because I like cooking with the iPad
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actually on the counter, it's nice.
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- One thing I'll say about like the meal kit rest,
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like you know, like the Hello Freshers,
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the Blue Aprons of the World,
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most of their recipes they also publish online.
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- Are on their website, yeah.
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Actually what I was thinking is,
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what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna,
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'cause I did this with one that I was about to prepare.
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What you do is you get the card that you saved out
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and you search for that recipe,
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find it on the meal prep site
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and then Mella grabs it from the web page.
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That's the trick, and then you throw away the card.
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-Super good. Very nice.
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Very good app.
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If you are looking for the list of every nomination
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we mentioned on the show,
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because we had quite a few people contact us,
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and say, "What was the name of this thing?
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What was the name of that thing?"
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-Yeah, the ones we didn't end up settling on as runners-up.
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-Jason published basically a copy and paste of our document,
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which also has all the percentages
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in for the upgradience votes,
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case you ever wanted to look at them. For next year I'm gonna try and find some
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kind of way of making this non-spoilery and available. I wonder if we can get our
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our dear official upgrade... what is his official title as the keeper of
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the upgradees? Yeah, Zach. Keeper of the upgradees. If we could ask Zach to
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to add like an also mentioned or something just on upgradees.com going forward. We're
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not going to go back through the whole history of the upgradees but maybe we could add something
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like that coming going forward where there's like these are the other ones that Myke and
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Jason mentioned that didn't end up. It's like it's an honor just to be mentioned.
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Yeah there'll be one thing or something I don't know what the right thing to do is yet.
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I mean the read because usually we'd put all that sort of stuff in the show notes right
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but I don't want to put all the stuff in the show notes because then it spoils it if you
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look at the show notes. So all the nominees, like the runners up and the winners are all
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on Upgradies.com but not all of the nominees. So we need to think of a way to do it because
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as well it's like really it's only apps and podcasts that needs to be, right?
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That's true.
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You don't need to, like, because the thing is what I was thinking, a lot of this stuff
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is Google-able but not all of it, right? And like, but like you don't need, if we say all
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the new James Bond movie. Like, what could it be? Right? Like, you can work that out
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on your own.
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- Yeah, it's, I mean, it would be something too if, like, there was a story that one of
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us thought was the story of the year and then we ended up not going with it and that the
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link might be valuable. But yeah, it's mostly, here's a product with a name and what we heard
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from people, especially as people who are not native English speakers, especially, will
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say the name of something and they'll be like, "I have no idea what they just said." So,
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- So, we're gonna, we're gonna, I think about it. Whether it goes on the website or whether
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we find somewhere else to put it.
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- You can check in the meantime,
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I've been using my microblog,
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which I had not ever used before to post this along with
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a connected thing that I posted.
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- You posted the original pickies rules.
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- This, that's right.
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Should we tell people that the pickies
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have to run website now?
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- Well, it's definitely gonna come up on connected.
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- 'Cause we haven't gotten to speak about
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the triple J takeover on connected,
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which if you have no idea what I'm talking about,
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I'll put a link in the show notes to this,
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but like, I don't really think it's gonna help you,
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but there's a good episode of "Connected"
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that came out a couple of weeks ago.
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- That I hijacked with John Voorhees and James Thompson,
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because we had been sort of become a running gag
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of threatening to take over "Connected"
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and that like there was a succession plan
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and all of these things,
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which led to one of my favorite things I've ever seen
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in the Discord, by the way, which is,
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I think it was Kate in their notebook wrote down succession plan,
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don't make one,
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which I think was John Voorhees advice was the trick is not to make a succession
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plan because then nobody will be in line to succeed you.
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And then you will survive. This culminated in the Christmas week episode,
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which had no ads and was originally just going to be a skip week.
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And several months ago we had the conversation among all six of us,
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which was like, should we, and it ended up, I mean,
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the answer was we probably shouldn't and so we did it anyway and it's there but really
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it's gonna make the most sense for people who actually listen to Connected because it
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is sort of a loving satire/real episode of Connected from a parallel universe.
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So yeah we're doing the annual Rickies this week but we haven't had the ability to talk
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about the pic because we pre-recorded our year in review episode before that
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you even recorded so I kind of love that because it meant that for a week that
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the connected audience is like they're not even they're pretending it did I
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hallucinate it did that really exist yeah the draft pennant that you lovingly
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made that we spoke about recently your gift to me has found its home I've
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I've posted it up here at the studio.
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I've put it in a place, I'd originally put it,
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so the kind of the way I have my studio set up,
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I have this kind of like sound insulated,
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like blankets and barriers that go around my recording desk.
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And I had put it on the inside here.
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So it was behind me when I'm recording.
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But then I thought to myself today,
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wouldn't it be fun to put it on the other side,
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which is then in view when I stream on Twitch.
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So now what you put people from this week's Twitch stream
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will see it.
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I put a link in the show notes to an image
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of what it looks like.
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And I think we've got one for you too, right?
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- What I also like you can see off in the corner
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is my connected MagTricky as well.
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- I saw that, I noticed that.
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- Start to a little metal cabinet.
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So yeah, that's now people will know at all times
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whether I am the challenger or the winner.
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- So the champion, yeah.
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I'm so happy about it.
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I'm satisfied now.
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It's not quite the same as the Ricky's trophies,
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and that's okay, but it is a, the tricky, yes,
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the short, tricky for short.
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- Thank you.
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- But it is exactly what I want, I think,
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is just a little flag there
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to signify the current draft champion status.
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- What I like is how big it is.
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- This is how I feel that you, you know,
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you're a certain dominance here.
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It's so much larger than any trophy that I have.
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- But it's, but it's two dimensional, it's flat.
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So in terms of volume, I don't know, but it's,
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it's literally, I got it to be just the size
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of the other penance that I have that are my like,
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that were on my childhood wall that are still,
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that are on my wall here in my office.
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It's penance sized, exactly.
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Actually by default it was going to be bigger.
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And I asked the person who made it,
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can we make it this size?
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And she said, yeah, I can cut it down to that size.
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That's fine.
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I also want to do a bit of follow out to our friend David Spark's upgradey winner from
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MacPowerUsers.
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David today announced that he is going fully independent and giving up his law practice.
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Many years ago David left his law firm and kind of went semi-independent, right?
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Create his own law practice, continued practicing law and running MacSparky and he has now given
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up the law practice and is going full on Max Barkey and has created something called Max
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Barkey Labs, which is a really cool membership program. So yeah, I just wanted to put a link
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in the show notes to David's announcement of this and also to the most recent episode
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of MacPowie where he talks about it. Because I love David. David's one of the nicest people
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on the planet and I really want him to succeed with this. So I just wanted to mention it
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here too. I have signed up to become a member of Max Barkey Labs and I encourage you to
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I, when he told me about this, I was very excited. I feel like he's been, he was talking
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about how, oh, I gotta do this and I gotta do this and I'm thinking about this because
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I saw one when I was down at Thanksgiving. I saw him and I know you saw him shortly thereafter.
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And it was funny because he's so agonizing over it, right? Because he wants to take care
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of his clients. And also it is this huge step like many of us have taken to be, you know,
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he already took the step to be independent, but he brought, you know, he kept a law practice
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going. He was independent, but he was Max Sparky plus, you know, Max Sparky Esquire.
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It was kind of weird because like he was independent, but still doing the thing he was doing before.
00:13:55
◼
►
Yeah, still doing two jobs. Yeah, exactly right. So it was, you know, like I understood
00:14:01
◼
►
completely why he was agonizing over all of it. And yet from my perspective, and I think
00:14:07
◼
►
the perspective of everybody who knows him,
00:14:09
◼
►
it's absolutely the logical next step in his career.
00:14:14
◼
►
'Cause the truth is that, you know,
00:14:16
◼
►
it's the same story we've all told,
00:14:18
◼
►
is how can you focus on building this thing
00:14:20
◼
►
that you wanna do if you've got this complete other thing?
00:14:23
◼
►
Like, if you think about how great a job David does
00:14:26
◼
►
with his Max Sparky stuff, like, it's not his 100% focus.
00:14:30
◼
►
It's not been up till now.
00:14:32
◼
►
It's been a partial focus with this whole other job.
00:14:36
◼
►
And now it's his focus 100%. It's going to be great.
00:14:39
◼
►
And he's going to succeed wildly at it.
00:14:41
◼
►
And I know that, you know, it's easy for me to say
00:14:43
◼
►
because I'm not the one making the risks
00:14:45
◼
►
by shutting down part of my livelihood.
00:14:48
◼
►
But, you know, I am extremely confident
00:14:51
◼
►
that he's going to do great. And Max Parkey Labs, you know,
00:14:55
◼
►
we had -- all of us who have done memberships
00:14:57
◼
►
had conversations with David.
00:14:59
◼
►
So I hope that he has really kind of taken to heart
00:15:01
◼
►
a lot of feedback from a lot of people
00:15:03
◼
►
in different kinds of membership systems
00:15:06
◼
►
and really tune that thing.
00:15:07
◼
►
And I'm looking forward to see what comes out
00:15:09
◼
►
of Max Sparky Labs.
00:15:11
◼
►
- Yeah, like I've seen various iterations
00:15:13
◼
►
that he showed me of like what he was gonna be offering.
00:15:15
◼
►
And as it's come down to where it is now,
00:15:17
◼
►
I can feel everybody's hands on his shoulders, you know?
00:15:21
◼
►
- Yeah, there was very much like,
00:15:22
◼
►
"Let me promise the moon."
00:15:24
◼
►
And we're all like, "No, no, no, no, no.
00:15:26
◼
►
Just scope it out."
00:15:28
◼
►
- Yeah, stuff we can do later on.
00:15:30
◼
►
- And it's good.
00:15:31
◼
►
The end result is something that I think--
00:15:33
◼
►
- And like I think everybody else,
00:15:35
◼
►
I am so incredibly jealous of the name.
00:15:39
◼
►
MaxSparkyLabs is just a great name for a membership program.
00:15:45
◼
►
It's just such a good name,
00:15:47
◼
►
and I'm really jealous that he has such a good brand on it.
00:15:50
◼
►
It's really, really nice.
00:15:52
◼
►
And yeah, and I'm super excited about it,
00:15:55
◼
►
and so I just wanted to mention it here,
00:15:56
◼
►
and there's a bunch of stuff that you can go and read
00:15:59
◼
►
and check out what David's up to.
00:16:01
◼
►
This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Bombas.
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Bombas' mission is simple, to make the most comfortable clothes ever and match every item
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- It was kind of Bombas Christmas this year.
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of a teenager, Julian got basically,
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it's a Bombas socks takeover.
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It's a good way.
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Our thanks to Bombas for their support of this show and Relay FM.
00:18:12
◼
►
So let's talk about Apple in 2022.
00:18:15
◼
►
So you wrote a couple of articles for Macworld kind of detailing some things that we could
00:18:19
◼
►
expect and things that you're looking for.
00:18:22
◼
►
And I kind of wanted to go through them and pepper in some, there's been some reports
00:18:25
◼
►
from Mark Gorman as well over the weekend about maybe some timelines for some of this
00:18:31
◼
►
stuff which is exciting as we look towards the new year.
00:18:35
◼
►
So let's first talk about the Mac because there's still a bunch of stuff to come.
00:18:38
◼
►
So I guess the expectation is we will be completing the Apple Silicon transition in 2022 fully,
00:18:46
◼
►
Yeah, that's my expectation.
00:18:49
◼
►
I'm not sure about the timeline.
00:18:51
◼
►
Mark Gurman seems to feel like they're going to wrap it up soon, which I'm sure was always
00:18:55
◼
►
their intent was to wrap.
00:18:56
◼
►
When they say it's going to be a two-year transition, I know we've talked about this,
00:19:00
◼
►
but like when Apple says that, they want to beat it.
00:19:03
◼
►
Like they're trying to be coy.
00:19:04
◼
►
They want to beat it.
00:19:05
◼
►
But we have all of the supply chain problems and all the product delays.
00:19:08
◼
►
And so I'm not entirely sure.
00:19:10
◼
►
I feel like everything's going to be announced and that there'll be an Apple silicon version
00:19:15
◼
►
of everything.
00:19:16
◼
►
There is a rumor, by the way, floating around there that there's going to be one last revision
00:19:19
◼
►
to the Intel Mac Pro.
00:19:20
◼
►
And I think that may be true because they may want to have like one Intel system that
00:19:26
◼
►
they can still have that's like for all their especially Mac Pro customers, institutional
00:19:30
◼
►
customers that'll like last a while.
00:19:31
◼
►
It's like if you really need to stay on Intel for a long time, you can buy this and it will
00:19:35
◼
►
will stay for a long time, but I don't wanna quibble about that because I think there will
00:19:41
◼
►
also be an Apple Silicon Mac Pro, right? I think we will be able to say that, yes, there's
00:19:45
◼
►
the last Intel Mac might be a revision to the Mac Pro, but I think they're gonna do
00:19:49
◼
►
an Apple Silicon Mac Pro and that's gonna complete the transition. The question is sort
00:19:54
◼
►
of when and how, but I feel like they're gonna do it. I think they're gonna get under the
00:19:59
◼
►
wire. Whether it's mid-year or it's really like in December, I think they're going to
00:20:05
◼
►
do it. I think we're going to be in a case where all of the primary representatives of
00:20:10
◼
►
every Apple model will be at Apple Silicon, even if there are a couple Intel legacy models
00:20:16
◼
►
just kicking around in the background for a little while longer.
00:20:19
◼
►
So, Mark's report in the Power On newsletter was saying that his expectation is that they
00:20:25
◼
►
will finish the transition as early as June, so WWDC.
00:20:30
◼
►
And that will be Mac Pro and iMac Pro.
00:20:32
◼
►
I don't think he mentioned anything about a Mac Mini,
00:20:34
◼
►
but I guess maybe that's just not of the most importance.
00:20:37
◼
►
- As early as is doing a lot of heavy lifting there, right?
00:20:41
◼
►
Because as early as June, or it could be December, right?
00:20:43
◼
►
It literally could be any time after that.
00:20:46
◼
►
- Oh yeah, I always get that one messed up in my brain
00:20:48
◼
►
when I see, for some reason when he says as early as,
00:20:51
◼
►
I think it means no later than,
00:20:53
◼
►
but that's the exact opposite.
00:20:54
◼
►
- Yeah, it's like saying you could save as much as 5%,
00:20:59
◼
►
you could save as much as 90%, right?
00:21:04
◼
►
It's like, well, you could, but it'll probably be 2%,
00:21:06
◼
►
it won't be 90%.
00:21:07
◼
►
- We have sold over 173 units.
00:21:10
◼
►
- Yeah, well, you mean 174 you're saying.
00:21:12
◼
►
So yeah, I like that.
00:21:14
◼
►
We've been in business for more than 27 years.
00:21:17
◼
►
Like, okay, so 28 then, got it, got it.
00:21:20
◼
►
Good timing there.
00:21:21
◼
►
So I, here's my prediction,
00:21:25
◼
►
since we're in the prediction business here,
00:21:26
◼
►
we don't compete on predictions like you do on connected.
00:21:30
◼
►
- Well, we do, but it's just a one week window
00:21:33
◼
►
on these things.
00:21:34
◼
►
- Yeah, I suppose so.
00:21:35
◼
►
So I think that they will announce something at WWDC,
00:21:40
◼
►
assuming that they're confident that they can ship it
00:21:46
◼
►
by the end of the year, maybe even before that.
00:21:48
◼
►
But WWDC is the right time to announce
00:21:51
◼
►
the Apple Silicon Mac Pro, and it doesn't have to shift.
00:21:53
◼
►
- I feel very confident that that's what they're gonna do,
00:21:55
◼
►
'cause they've done that two times before
00:21:57
◼
►
with this product.
00:21:58
◼
►
Like, okay, so they did it with the Mac Pro.
00:22:00
◼
►
- With the Mac Pro and the iMac Pro.
00:22:02
◼
►
- But as we said before, that iMac Pro was the Mac Pro.
00:22:05
◼
►
Nobody is gonna be like,
00:22:10
◼
►
"Well, I was gonna buy an Intel Mac Pro,
00:22:13
◼
►
"but now that they've announced
00:22:15
◼
►
"this Apple Silicon Mac Pro,
00:22:16
◼
►
"it's just not gonna happen."
00:22:18
◼
►
Because like every time they've done that,
00:22:20
◼
►
they keep the old product around.
00:22:21
◼
►
Like the trash can Mac Pro, you could still buy,
00:22:24
◼
►
I think after they started shipping the other,
00:22:27
◼
►
and it will be the same.
00:22:28
◼
►
- I am a believer in this rumor
00:22:30
◼
►
about the updated Xeon Intel Mac Pro.
00:22:32
◼
►
I think that they're gonna keep that thing around
00:22:33
◼
►
in the background for a while,
00:22:35
◼
►
because they know that they've got customers
00:22:39
◼
►
are gonna be like, "Oh, but I need this card,
00:22:41
◼
►
or I need this driver,
00:22:42
◼
►
and I need this thing that's only on Intel."
00:22:44
◼
►
And they're gonna be like, "All right,
00:22:45
◼
►
- Especially because they're expecting it
00:22:48
◼
►
to be a different body shape, right?
00:22:50
◼
►
Like the rumors are saying it's gonna be a different case.
00:22:55
◼
►
So I think it would make sense
00:22:56
◼
►
that they will then keep the older one around,
00:22:59
◼
►
I would expect for a pretty long time.
00:23:02
◼
►
Kind of like the way you would see it in the laptops, right?
00:23:05
◼
►
Where like you can still get the Touch Bar MacBook Pro
00:23:07
◼
►
if you try hard enough.
00:23:09
◼
►
- Right, and they're kicking around
00:23:11
◼
►
and they have inventory and they have refurbs
00:23:13
◼
►
and like Intel, 'cause there aren't people,
00:23:15
◼
►
believe it or not, who are going to need Intel.
00:23:19
◼
►
They're just going to.
00:23:20
◼
►
Like, so there will be ways for them to get it,
00:23:24
◼
►
but Apple's gonna move on.
00:23:25
◼
►
And in terms of what that Mac Pro is,
00:23:27
◼
►
you know, I think it's gonna be just that compact rumor
00:23:31
◼
►
makes sense to me, especially if GPUs outside
00:23:35
◼
►
of the processor are not an option.
00:23:36
◼
►
There'll be storage and maybe some other places
00:23:41
◼
►
where you could add connectivity.
00:23:42
◼
►
So internal storage and connectivity options to bulk it up
00:23:46
◼
►
and that's why it's a big desktop tower kind of thing.
00:23:51
◼
►
I think that's reasonable,
00:23:52
◼
►
but I think Apple's not gonna do
00:23:54
◼
►
external GPU support this time.
00:23:56
◼
►
I think it's gonna be exactly what we think it's gonna be,
00:23:58
◼
►
exactly what the rumors say it's gonna be,
00:24:00
◼
►
which is they're gonna offer those M1 Macs processors
00:24:05
◼
►
in 2X and 4X configurations.
00:24:10
◼
►
And that's what, and so the GPUs will scale
00:24:14
◼
►
and the cores will scale, but it's just gonna be,
00:24:17
◼
►
I think we know exactly what this is gonna be.
00:24:19
◼
►
I think you could predict it.
00:24:20
◼
►
I'm actually most curious about
00:24:23
◼
►
if they build in a bunch of storage
00:24:25
◼
►
and expansion stuff inside what that looks like.
00:24:30
◼
►
But I think that's what the expandability is gonna be,
00:24:33
◼
►
is storage and expansion.
00:24:35
◼
►
And maybe, you know, maybe they'll do something else wild,
00:24:37
◼
►
like put the processors on a daughter card
00:24:40
◼
►
or something like that so that you could actually swap out
00:24:42
◼
►
the processors later.
00:24:43
◼
►
Like I wouldn't put it past Apple for them to say,
00:24:48
◼
►
since we control this platform,
00:24:50
◼
►
we can build it the way we want.
00:24:53
◼
►
And that includes some kinds of swapability
00:24:55
◼
►
that pros desire that maybe weren't there before,
00:25:00
◼
►
but it's not gonna be like it was.
00:25:03
◼
►
It's gonna be a totally different kind of take on it.
00:25:05
◼
►
- Considering when this product is gonna debut,
00:25:08
◼
►
Do you think it will be an M1?
00:25:10
◼
►
Like Max? - I do.
00:25:12
◼
►
- Yeah? - I do.
00:25:13
◼
►
I think that although there will be an M2 this year,
00:25:18
◼
►
and Mark Gurman has that report,
00:25:20
◼
►
and it's exactly what we thought,
00:25:21
◼
►
which is basically it will progress
00:25:23
◼
►
just like the A14 to A15.
00:25:26
◼
►
M1 to M2, it'll be a little bit faster, right?
00:25:28
◼
►
That's just, it's the same sort of thing.
00:25:30
◼
►
I think Apple's probably using the M1 as the basis, right?
00:25:34
◼
►
They do the M1 and then they do the M1 Pro and Max,
00:25:36
◼
►
and then the Mac Pro will have multiple M1 Pro
00:25:39
◼
►
or Macs chips in it, and probably Macs,
00:25:43
◼
►
and it'll all be based on the M1,
00:25:45
◼
►
because there seems to be like a real sort of amount
00:25:48
◼
►
of time that they need to build up to that point.
00:25:50
◼
►
And honestly, I'm not sure M2 Macs--
00:25:53
◼
►
- Would be enough of a thing to try and--
00:25:56
◼
►
- Right. - Yeah, okay.
00:25:57
◼
►
- And also, they're probably,
00:25:58
◼
►
they have some thoughts about how they want
00:26:00
◼
►
to take their chip architecture
00:26:02
◼
►
for the Pro line going forward in terms of dual and quad,
00:26:06
◼
►
And probably M1 has some of that in it,
00:26:08
◼
►
but they probably got some other things that they wanna do,
00:26:11
◼
►
maybe including having scalable graphics
00:26:13
◼
►
or something like that,
00:26:14
◼
►
that will be in a future version that they're working on.
00:26:17
◼
►
But I think M1 will deliver what they want now.
00:26:21
◼
►
And I don't think anybody's gonna look at that M1 Mac Pro
00:26:23
◼
►
and be like, "Ah, it's a lightweight
00:26:24
◼
►
'cause it says M1 on it."
00:26:25
◼
►
'Cause it's gonna be M1 Mac's quad
00:26:28
◼
►
and people are gonna lose their minds.
00:26:30
◼
►
So I think that's what it's gonna be.
00:26:32
◼
►
- From a design perspective,
00:26:34
◼
►
Obviously we've got some new design stuff, right?
00:26:37
◼
►
We've got the iMac and the MacBook Pros, they are new.
00:26:40
◼
►
They have stuff that's interesting
00:26:42
◼
►
and different about them.
00:26:43
◼
►
Are you expecting any more surprises in 2022
00:26:48
◼
►
from like a hardware design perspective on the Mac?
00:26:50
◼
►
- I think, I mean, a surprise is the question.
00:26:55
◼
►
Germin has reported several times,
00:26:57
◼
►
so I'm gonna take him at his word,
00:26:59
◼
►
that the new MacBook Air is going to be a serious redesign.
00:27:02
◼
►
They are going to redesign the MacBook Air
00:27:04
◼
►
for essentially the first time since the MacBook Air
00:27:07
◼
►
as we know it was introduced back when.
00:27:10
◼
►
'Cause remember they brought it back essentially
00:27:14
◼
►
after they kind of left it hanging
00:27:16
◼
►
and the modern new version of the MacBook Air
00:27:19
◼
►
is a dead ringer for the old MacBook Air.
00:27:22
◼
►
I think that they now are going to do their new take
00:27:25
◼
►
on MacBook Air and so it is gonna look different
00:27:27
◼
►
and what is that gonna look like?
00:27:28
◼
►
And I do think it's gonna have colors.
00:27:30
◼
►
So I think that's great.
00:27:31
◼
►
I think the MacBook Air is gonna be,
00:27:34
◼
►
The M1 MacBook Air is really nice,
00:27:35
◼
►
but it is indistinguishable.
00:27:36
◼
►
Take it from me,
00:27:38
◼
►
somebody who lives in a family of MacBook Air users.
00:27:41
◼
►
We have so many MacBook Airs in this house.
00:27:43
◼
►
My daughter was home over the break,
00:27:44
◼
►
and it's like, everybody's got their own MacBook Air.
00:27:47
◼
►
There are four of them,
00:27:48
◼
►
and all of them are from different model years,
00:27:51
◼
►
but they're all MacBook Airs,
00:27:54
◼
►
and they all look exactly the same,
00:27:56
◼
►
and the 2022 Air won't.
00:27:58
◼
►
It'll look different.
00:27:59
◼
►
You'll be able to tell at a glance that it's the new Air.
00:28:01
◼
►
And I'm excited by that just like I was excited
00:28:04
◼
►
by the M1 iMac, because it is not that common
00:28:09
◼
►
when Apple takes a product, a Mac product,
00:28:13
◼
►
and completely changes its exterior.
00:28:15
◼
►
Usually it sort of, it does it,
00:28:17
◼
►
and then it keeps it for a while.
00:28:19
◼
►
And we're starting to see with Apple Silicon
00:28:21
◼
►
the opportunity for Apple to finally
00:28:23
◼
►
get some of these changes out there.
00:28:24
◼
►
So I think that'll be the new MacBook Air.
00:28:27
◼
►
Otherwise, I'm gonna, and it's boring predictions,
00:28:30
◼
►
But I think that there will be a big iMac
00:28:32
◼
►
and it will be called iMac Pro.
00:28:34
◼
►
I think it will come in boring color options
00:28:36
◼
►
and not the bright color options
00:28:37
◼
►
because that's a very Apple thing to do.
00:28:39
◼
►
Maybe they'll have some colors
00:28:40
◼
►
but there'll be boring iPhone Pro kind of colors.
00:28:43
◼
►
That's the old, you know, midnight lemon kind of thing
00:28:45
◼
►
where it's just all forest green and, you know,
00:28:49
◼
►
midnight blue and other things that are almost the same.
00:28:53
◼
►
Maybe it'll come in black.
00:28:54
◼
►
That would be great if it was truly in black
00:28:56
◼
►
and not just a space gray.
00:28:58
◼
►
But I think that they'll use what they call Pro colors,
00:29:00
◼
►
which is to say not colors that are very interesting.
00:29:04
◼
►
But I think they'll call it a Pro
00:29:06
◼
►
and that it'll offer the Pro processor options
00:29:09
◼
►
that are in the MacBook Pros
00:29:12
◼
►
and maybe even offer like a dual,
00:29:15
◼
►
maybe not a quad like the Mac Pro,
00:29:17
◼
►
but maybe even a dual M1 Max option that'll cost a fortune,
00:29:22
◼
►
but it'll be super powerful.
00:29:25
◼
►
And it'll look different.
00:29:26
◼
►
I think it'll look more like the M1 iMac, but I don't think it's gonna be all snazzy
00:29:32
◼
►
And I do believe they'll replace the Mac Mini with a Mac Mini Pro, too.
00:29:35
◼
►
That Intel Mac Mini will get replaced by another kind of dark gray Mac Mini that has a better
00:29:42
◼
►
cooling system and options for Pro and Mac chips for people who want that.
00:29:47
◼
►
Obviously, we've mentioned it.
00:29:48
◼
►
It's been mentioned everywhere to death, I think, at this point, but displays, yay?
00:29:54
◼
►
It's gonna happen.
00:29:55
◼
►
And then in these Macworld columns,
00:29:57
◼
►
one of the things that I love
00:29:58
◼
►
is that I ended up picking the same thing,
00:30:00
◼
►
predicting the same thing year after year after year.
00:30:01
◼
►
I predicted the year of Apple Silicon
00:30:03
◼
►
three times in a row before it happened.
00:30:05
◼
►
I predicted that external display three times.
00:30:07
◼
►
So I'm just gonna keep predicting it until it happens.
00:30:09
◼
►
But I really do,
00:30:10
◼
►
before it was sort of like tinted with wish casting
00:30:13
◼
►
and now it's just straight up, it's gonna happen.
00:30:16
◼
►
- I mean, also it was just like, this is logical, right?
00:30:18
◼
►
Like it was like, they should do this.
00:30:20
◼
►
So I'm gonna predict it because if I think they should do it,
00:30:22
◼
►
surely they should think it too.
00:30:23
◼
►
- Right, and that doesn't always work out,
00:30:25
◼
►
but I think this year, and Germin, again, here,
00:30:27
◼
►
has said they're absolutely doing this.
00:30:30
◼
►
I don't know what, if I had to guess,
00:30:32
◼
►
my guess is going to be that they're going to do two.
00:30:35
◼
►
I think they're gonna do a 27
00:30:37
◼
►
that is essentially the same display
00:30:39
◼
►
that's gonna be in the iMac Pro.
00:30:41
◼
►
It's gonna be a micro LED,
00:30:42
◼
►
and I think Germin said half the price
00:30:45
◼
►
of the Pro Display XDR,
00:30:46
◼
►
so we're talking about a $2,500 display.
00:30:49
◼
►
Not cheap, but--
00:30:53
◼
►
better. It makes you wonder what the price of the iMac Pro is going to start at, and my guess is
00:30:58
◼
►
going to be probably like $2,500, $2,700 is where it's going to start, somewhere in there. It's not
00:31:02
◼
►
going to be cheap. I mean that was never a cheap computer, right? Like the iMac Pro. The 27-inch,
00:31:07
◼
►
even the 27-inch iMac was not like, that's not your low price leader, and quite honestly the
00:31:11
◼
►
24-inch iMac is is gorgeous. And so I think that that will exist, and I do think they're going to
00:31:17
◼
►
update the Pro Display XDR to be a micro LED, you know, basically to do all the things that
00:31:24
◼
►
it is lacking now that are in its laptops where the laptop has a better screen than
00:31:28
◼
►
their $5,000 monitor. Do you mean mini or micro? Oh, sorry, whatever it is. Mini is
00:31:33
◼
►
what we have now in other-- Mini display. Because I think that that is also a standard.
00:31:38
◼
►
Right, micro LED is in the Apple Watch, I think, they're working on. That was a rumor
00:31:43
◼
►
that they wanted to do that for some other devices, but yeah, it's a mini-LED. It's the
00:31:47
◼
►
M1, or sorry, it's the MacBook Pro display technology. I think they're gonna roll that
00:31:52
◼
►
out everywhere. And it's gonna cost. But, so I do think they will end up with a Pro
00:31:58
◼
►
Display XDR replacement and a 27-inch standalone that everybody will complain about how much
00:32:06
◼
►
it costs and then everybody will buy it. It's a bold prediction, but I do think it's gonna
00:32:12
◼
►
right now maybe I'll see if I can promise this I won't complain about how
00:32:16
◼
►
much it costs because I know it's gonna be expensive so mm-hmm if I buy one I
00:32:20
◼
►
know it's gonna be that's what it's gonna be right so I want I'll promise
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◼
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00:34:23
◼
►
I wrote down in the document "A Quiet Year for the iPhone" because that was kind of a thing that you
00:34:27
◼
►
you were mentioning in your article, right?
00:34:31
◼
►
It's not gonna be the bigger.
00:34:32
◼
►
But then I started like thinking about it
00:34:34
◼
►
and looking around, I don't think this is gonna be
00:34:37
◼
►
a quiet year for the iPhone.
00:34:38
◼
►
So here's three things here, right?
00:34:41
◼
►
One is we're gonna see another shake up in the product line
00:34:45
◼
►
because the expectation is that a iPhone 14 Max
00:34:50
◼
►
will enter the line, replacing the Mini,
00:34:55
◼
►
which is kind of hilarious really,
00:34:57
◼
►
'cause it's not really replacing it,
00:34:59
◼
►
but it's taking the spot that the Mini will be leaving
00:35:02
◼
►
as the Mini leaves the product line.
00:35:04
◼
►
Which is interesting to me.
00:35:07
◼
►
I mean, it's gonna be kind of fascinating to see really.
00:35:10
◼
►
Like will the iPhone 14 Max sell more units
00:35:14
◼
►
than the iPhone 14, an iPhone 14 Mini would?
00:35:19
◼
►
I think the answer to that is yes, personally.
00:35:21
◼
►
Which is why they would do it, otherwise why, you know.
00:35:25
◼
►
'Cause I think I heard someone say this recently,
00:35:27
◼
►
I don't remember where it was, and I thought it was smart,
00:35:29
◼
►
really, of like, at the moment, if you want a big phone,
00:35:32
◼
►
you have to spend the most amount of money.
00:35:34
◼
►
-But that's my counterargument, is how many people buy the Pro Max,
00:35:38
◼
►
not because they want a Pro but they want a big phone,
00:35:40
◼
►
and how much are they losing?
00:35:42
◼
►
And that's the calculation there, is if you do an iPhone Max
00:35:46
◼
►
that's not Pro, you are gonna get some people to buy it
00:35:50
◼
►
who would otherwise not,
00:35:51
◼
►
but you're also gonna lose some people
00:35:53
◼
►
who would have bought the Pro Max
00:35:54
◼
►
and now feel like they don't need to.
00:35:56
◼
►
- But I mean, I would wonder if that is the same amount
00:35:59
◼
►
of people that will buy it because they also want
00:36:01
◼
►
whatever features the pro one gets.
00:36:03
◼
►
I don't know, we're gonna assume that there are people
00:36:06
◼
►
smarter than us at Apple who are making those decisions
00:36:09
◼
►
and this is what they do. - It's their whole job.
00:36:10
◼
►
There are literally people, it's their entire job
00:36:13
◼
►
to make that calculation.
00:36:14
◼
►
- There are teams of people, right?
00:36:15
◼
►
- Yeah, you're right. - Teams upon teams of people
00:36:17
◼
►
whose entire jobs as it works out.
00:36:19
◼
►
So if they do it, you've got to assume,
00:36:21
◼
►
and I know, I know, I know, like I can already hear
00:36:24
◼
►
the sound of emails being opened.
00:36:26
◼
►
I know that every single person who has an iPhone mini
00:36:30
◼
►
is gonna be really mad and upset about it.
00:36:32
◼
►
Hello, Jason's one of those people who've been in an email
00:36:34
◼
►
to me, but the thing is, Apple's a business.
00:36:38
◼
►
They do not do these things for your pleasure, personally.
00:36:41
◼
►
- How dare you?
00:36:42
◼
►
- No one's buying them relatively, right?
00:36:46
◼
►
If they were selling like hundreds of millions
00:36:50
◼
►
of iPhone minis, they wouldn't get rid of them, right?
00:36:52
◼
►
Like it's a product I think that has underwhelmed
00:36:55
◼
►
and expectation and they are like going back and thinking,
00:36:58
◼
►
hey, we used to do this non a billion dollars big phone
00:37:02
◼
►
and sold so many of those.
00:37:04
◼
►
So why don't we bring that back into the line?
00:37:06
◼
►
- I suspect that the sales performance of the mini
00:37:09
◼
►
opened up the conversation of like,
00:37:11
◼
►
could we try something else in that fourth slot?
00:37:13
◼
►
Especially if you think about it this way.
00:37:15
◼
►
And when I talk about a quiet year for the iPhone,
00:37:17
◼
►
one of the reasons I talk about that is iPhone design
00:37:20
◼
►
is on like a three year cycle at this point.
00:37:22
◼
►
So, and you see it in the sales charts.
00:37:25
◼
►
We talked about it in terms of,
00:37:26
◼
►
when you look at their sales over time,
00:37:28
◼
►
there is actually an iPhone cycle,
00:37:30
◼
►
and it's the design cycle where the iPhone 12 comes out
00:37:34
◼
►
and there's a huge sales spike
00:37:36
◼
►
because it's a brand new look for a phone.
00:37:38
◼
►
And then 13 and 14 will be less.
00:37:41
◼
►
And that's why it's a quiet year in a sense,
00:37:43
◼
►
is that it's not gonna look any different.
00:37:45
◼
►
And so you're not gonna have that huge pent-up demand
00:37:48
◼
►
'cause I think a lot of people are just on the,
00:37:50
◼
►
it's a new iPhone look buying cycle every three years or so.
00:37:54
◼
►
So leaving that behind for a second,
00:37:57
◼
►
your Apple and you look at the mini for the iPhone 12
00:38:00
◼
►
and you look at the sales and you're like,
00:38:01
◼
►
it's not great.
00:38:03
◼
►
And you say, well, it's too late for 13.
00:38:06
◼
►
We're already locked in 'cause Apple is working way ahead.
00:38:08
◼
►
We're already locked in for 13.
00:38:10
◼
►
Let's do an experiment for 14.
00:38:15
◼
►
Let's see if this other approach would work
00:38:18
◼
►
and we'll get some data on it.
00:38:19
◼
►
And then, you know, they're still gonna have to be working
00:38:21
◼
►
on whatever the 15 design is
00:38:23
◼
►
before they get that data probably.
00:38:24
◼
►
But I think they looked at this as an opportunity
00:38:29
◼
►
to do something different.
00:38:30
◼
►
I wonder if in the long run,
00:38:32
◼
►
what they're gonna decide to do instead
00:38:34
◼
►
is make the iPhone whatever a little smaller
00:38:39
◼
►
than today's iPhone whatever.
00:38:41
◼
►
- Oh, the regular?
00:38:43
◼
►
- Yeah, and make the iPhone max
00:38:46
◼
►
if they decide to keep it bigger,
00:38:48
◼
►
but more like 10R size so that you have two sizes,
00:38:53
◼
►
but they're not exactly matched to the Pro sizes.
00:38:57
◼
►
Or if they're gonna just say,
00:38:58
◼
►
like, let's just keep this easy.
00:38:59
◼
►
They're literally the two phone sizes.
00:39:02
◼
►
- What I would say is I could imagine maybe like
00:39:04
◼
►
the 14 year is a test for 15 year
00:39:08
◼
►
as to whether they adjust it again.
00:39:10
◼
►
Because that's a redesign, you know?
00:39:12
◼
►
And that's like what you're saying,
00:39:14
◼
►
like they maybe try and keep it a few years
00:39:17
◼
►
so they can get the most out of each design.
00:39:19
◼
►
If they just start changing the physical sizes again,
00:39:22
◼
►
well, you may as well just go back to the drawing board
00:39:24
◼
►
'cause you've made it way harder for yourself,
00:39:25
◼
►
but we'll find out.
00:39:26
◼
►
But here's something interesting.
00:39:29
◼
►
Mark Gurman says, "Whole punch display,"
00:39:31
◼
►
in probably the pro models.
00:39:33
◼
►
Now that's gonna be a big deal.
00:39:35
◼
►
That's no notch anymore.
00:39:37
◼
►
- Yeah, I mean, I don't think the notch is a big deal,
00:39:40
◼
►
so I don't think it's a big deal.
00:39:42
◼
►
- I mean, but just from a visual perspective, right?
00:39:44
◼
►
Like, you know, like when they're, from, from,
00:39:46
◼
►
it's, they're gonna make a big deal out of that, right?
00:39:49
◼
►
Like, look how incredible our gorgeous display,
00:39:51
◼
►
you know, like it's gonna be,
00:39:52
◼
►
they make a big deal out of everything.
00:39:54
◼
►
But that's gonna be cool, I think.
00:39:55
◼
►
And so the, the Face ID sensors will be going
00:39:58
◼
►
under the display, is the expectation there.
00:40:02
◼
►
And Ming-Chi Kuo says that there will be
00:40:06
◼
►
a 48 megapixel camera on probably the Pro.
00:40:10
◼
►
Now this is interesting because Apple has been using
00:40:12
◼
►
24 megapixel camera for a really long time. Like years and years and years
00:40:17
◼
►
they've kind of been pretty stuck on 24 megapixels and I'm happy that they will
00:40:21
◼
►
go up because I sometimes want a bit more sharpness or a bit more detail out
00:40:26
◼
►
of my iPhone photos and so I would welcome this change so that's
00:40:33
◼
►
gonna be pretty cool I think. Yeah okay so again if this is all predicated on me
00:40:38
◼
►
saying it's a quiet year for the iPhone which I think is a simple way of doing
00:40:42
◼
►
it's not going to be, depends on who you're talking to, right?
00:40:45
◼
►
- There's not going to be a revolutionary new iPhone.
00:40:48
◼
►
Everybody who follows the iPhone closely
00:40:50
◼
►
knows how this goes, right?
00:40:51
◼
►
They change the outside.
00:40:52
◼
►
Everybody freaks out.
00:40:53
◼
►
They're like, "Oh my God, it's a new iPhone.
00:40:55
◼
►
I'm going to buy it."
00:40:56
◼
►
And then the next year they iterate
00:40:57
◼
►
and it's a little bit better.
00:40:58
◼
►
And the next year they iterate and it's better.
00:41:00
◼
►
And somewhere in those two other iterations,
00:41:02
◼
►
you know what happens is there are huge internal upgrades.
00:41:05
◼
►
- Can I just, because I've already got a bunch of people
00:41:07
◼
►
saying, I just want to try and stop before again,
00:41:10
◼
►
more tweets, 12 megapixels, not 24, that they've had for years, and now we've got 48. So that'd
00:41:15
◼
►
be a big difference. Big, big difference.
00:41:16
◼
►
Big difference. And this is what they do, right? This is what they do, is it doesn't
00:41:20
◼
►
change on the outside, and then all the reviews come out and they're like, "I know it doesn't
00:41:23
◼
►
look any different, but this is a huge change to the camera." And that's what they do. They
00:41:27
◼
►
don't tend to put all of their massive changes in one revision, including the exterior, and
00:41:34
◼
►
then let it not change at all for two years, right? Instead, it's all kind of coming in
00:41:39
◼
►
sequence. And so a much better camera in the third year of the phone body, not surprising
00:41:46
◼
►
and actually, I mean, and it's great. Like that's great because in some ways, the camera
00:41:51
◼
►
is the biggest motivator for some people. Some people it's the outside shape and some
00:41:56
◼
►
people it's the camera. And, and I like that, that, that 48 megapixel rumor because the
00:42:03
◼
►
other thing that's happening if we want to talk about 2023 for a moment is the iPhone
00:42:09
◼
►
15 seems to be where they're finally going to do the periscope thing.
00:42:13
◼
►
Yeah and that's going to require a huge redesign of the phone.
00:42:17
◼
►
Entire rethink I mean I can hear them talking about it now even though it's going to be
00:42:20
◼
►
fall of the 23 but it's an entire rethink of the interior of the iPhone because they
00:42:24
◼
►
want to increase the focal length which means they have to bounce the light off of a mirror
00:42:27
◼
►
and then run it down to the camera in the body of the phone.
00:42:32
◼
►
And that's gonna be really good, I think,
00:42:36
◼
►
in terms of really changing what Apple can do
00:42:38
◼
►
with photography on the iPhone.
00:42:41
◼
►
But that's a 23 thing.
00:42:43
◼
►
In the meantime, what can you do?
00:42:45
◼
►
And the answer is, well, presumably that phone
00:42:47
◼
►
is gonna have an amazing sensor on it.
00:42:49
◼
►
The sensor is gonna happen maybe this year, right?
00:42:52
◼
►
We'll get the sensor, that awesome sensor this year,
00:42:55
◼
►
and then next year they will upgrade the optics.
00:42:57
◼
►
and it's just more Apple iteration going on. But even in the existing phone design, having that
00:43:04
◼
►
new sensor will be, and I'm sure they're gonna, if it's a 48 megapixel camera, like they're gonna
00:43:10
◼
►
do all sorts of very clever software stuff to it, where they can say, well, you know, it's not just
00:43:17
◼
►
about the megapixels, it's really about how we use those pixels to process the image, etc, etc.
00:43:21
◼
►
Deep focus, sweaters, etc. Yeah, this is gonna give me the opportunity to just say something
00:43:25
◼
►
something's been annoying me. I think deep fusion, whatever it's called.
00:43:29
◼
►
Oh sorry, deep fusion.
00:43:30
◼
►
I mean it could be called deep focus, I don't remember, because they also have fusion drives.
00:43:36
◼
►
That processing where they increase the sharpness is ruining some photos of mine. Like just
00:43:42
◼
►
ruining them. It adds like a darkness to images or over, it's like over sharpening them. And
00:43:49
◼
►
this has been going on for a while and I'm just really unhappy with some images. Like
00:43:54
◼
►
I take a photo, I look at it and I'm happy with it and then a split second later it does
00:43:59
◼
►
the processing and it is just really ruining some photos of mine and I can't do anything
00:44:05
◼
►
about it, right?
00:44:06
◼
►
And so I would really love the 48 megapixel camera because I think they will then have
00:44:12
◼
►
to rely on this less because that's all about adding detail and sharpness to images.
00:44:18
◼
►
I think sometimes it's doing that at the expense of color and clarity.
00:44:24
◼
►
So I'll be excited for an improvement there.
00:44:29
◼
►
That's the iPhone.
00:44:31
◼
►
Mini LED for the 11-inch iPad Pro would be the expectation, right?
00:44:36
◼
►
That might be the only real big thing for iPad hardware this year?
00:44:41
◼
►
You know, Mark Gurman talks about updates to the iPads, and he seems to say it in a
00:44:47
◼
►
in a way that he's more enthusiastic about it than I am.
00:44:51
◼
►
I think they're gonna not change what they look like at all.
00:44:55
◼
►
They'll probably get the M2 processor
00:44:58
◼
►
that's also in the MacBook Air,
00:45:00
◼
►
and that may enable some stuff
00:45:01
◼
►
that is not currently enabled.
00:45:02
◼
►
I do think the standout thing,
00:45:05
◼
►
and there'll probably be an iPad Air update
00:45:07
◼
►
at some point this year,
00:45:08
◼
►
because it's time, it's a little long in the tooth.
00:45:11
◼
►
But I think the really big development
00:45:13
◼
►
on the hardware side for the iPad
00:45:14
◼
►
is gonna be that that 11-inch model gets a mini-LED.
00:45:18
◼
►
- iPad OS to get a windowed mode
00:45:21
◼
►
is a thing that you seem pretty in on.
00:45:24
◼
►
- I keep saying it, and it also still hasn't happened.
00:45:27
◼
►
This is a little less certain than the display one
00:45:30
◼
►
and a little more like wish casting is involved,
00:45:33
◼
►
but I feel like the evidence is there.
00:45:36
◼
►
And I know you've talked to Federico about this a lot too.
00:45:39
◼
►
Like the evidence is there.
00:45:41
◼
►
the multitasking and windowing and pointer support
00:45:46
◼
►
and keyboard support and keyboard shortcut support.
00:45:51
◼
►
And like Apple keeps heaping stuff on to iPad OS
00:45:56
◼
►
that is required if you're going to do
00:46:02
◼
►
a multi-windowing external display kind of feature.
00:46:07
◼
►
And that feature doesn't exist yet.
00:46:10
◼
►
and they got Thunderbolt, you know,
00:46:12
◼
►
like it's right at the precipice.
00:46:16
◼
►
So the question is, are they gonna actually do it?
00:46:19
◼
►
I feel like the release of the display,
00:46:22
◼
►
external display, would be a great time
00:46:26
◼
►
for them to announce this.
00:46:28
◼
►
I don't know if this is an iPad OS next gen feature
00:46:31
◼
►
or whether it's more like the pointer
00:46:33
◼
►
and it comes in the spring or something
00:46:36
◼
►
as a update to the existing iPad OS.
00:46:39
◼
►
I don't know that part,
00:46:41
◼
►
but I feel like they've been pushing this
00:46:43
◼
►
all this time to get to this point.
00:46:46
◼
►
And I do think iPadOS needs to be unchained in this way.
00:46:49
◼
►
I do think that we need to reach the point
00:46:51
◼
►
where if you can attach an iPad to an external display,
00:46:55
◼
►
look, we've already got a pointing device,
00:46:57
◼
►
we've already got a keyboard,
00:47:00
◼
►
we've already got a multi-window support,
00:47:03
◼
►
and like we've already got floating windows in some apps,
00:47:07
◼
►
Like all the pieces are there.
00:47:10
◼
►
So they just need to take that last step,
00:47:13
◼
►
which is I plug this into a big screen
00:47:15
◼
►
and I can drag around a bunch of iPad windows
00:47:19
◼
►
and run it from my iPad.
00:47:21
◼
►
Like I do think they like all the evidence is there
00:47:25
◼
►
that they're going there,
00:47:26
◼
►
but they have to take that final step.
00:47:27
◼
►
So I'm gonna say this year is the year
00:47:29
◼
►
just because they've gotten everything aligned
00:47:32
◼
►
and they're going to do an external display.
00:47:35
◼
►
and I feel like that's the perfect time to talk about it
00:47:38
◼
►
is here's your iPad Pro
00:47:39
◼
►
and here's your new Apple Pro display and boom.
00:47:43
◼
►
- One of the things I just read to put this as a quote
00:47:45
◼
►
because you seem to say this
00:47:47
◼
►
as if you were very confident of it.
00:47:48
◼
►
One of the major features of iOS 16
00:47:50
◼
►
will be a new version of Notes that allows cross-linking.
00:47:54
◼
►
- Yeah, I think it's gonna happen.
00:47:55
◼
►
I just, I think the Notes team,
00:47:59
◼
►
which is pretty active and paying attention,
00:48:01
◼
►
has seen all the excitement about Notion
00:48:05
◼
►
and Rome and Obsidian and all the rest,
00:48:10
◼
►
all of these fancy note-taking apps
00:48:12
◼
►
that let you interlink your notes.
00:48:14
◼
►
And I think that Apple is going to do their take
00:48:18
◼
►
on a knowledge base like that.
00:48:22
◼
►
And I think it will be something that will frustrate
00:48:24
◼
►
all the fans of those apps because it will not be
00:48:27
◼
►
as complex as that for lots of reasons,
00:48:30
◼
►
but that's Apple's stock and trade really with this stuff
00:48:34
◼
►
is how do we bring the desire to do that to the masses
00:48:37
◼
►
in a sort of a simplified form?
00:48:39
◼
►
But I think it's gonna happen
00:48:40
◼
►
because it's just laying right out there.
00:48:42
◼
►
If you're on the Notes team
00:48:43
◼
►
and you're looking at the trend in your world,
00:48:45
◼
►
which is Notes apps, how could you miss this one?
00:48:49
◼
►
So I think they're gonna do it.
00:48:50
◼
►
And it makes sense.
00:48:51
◼
►
Like I should be able to link from one note to another note.
00:48:54
◼
►
Like even if you don't know anything about those other apps,
00:48:56
◼
►
it totally makes sense to say this is in that other note
00:48:59
◼
►
and be able to create a little link to it.
00:49:01
◼
►
So I think that's gonna happen.
00:49:03
◼
►
- I totally agree with your thinking,
00:49:05
◼
►
that it's like this is the thing now that you do
00:49:08
◼
►
if you're in one of these kinds of applications
00:49:10
◼
►
and then VCs pour money all over you.
00:49:12
◼
►
So it's become like a thing that
00:49:13
◼
►
a lot of these applications are doing,
00:49:15
◼
►
but that means it's becoming a standard of the space.
00:49:17
◼
►
So probably it makes sense for Apple to do it too, right?
00:49:20
◼
►
But in a less powerful way,
00:49:23
◼
►
they will do it in the most basic way possible.
00:49:26
◼
►
- Yes, yeah.
00:49:27
◼
►
It will be, it's not gonna be Sherlocking, right?
00:49:30
◼
►
It's gonna be once again what Apple really does,
00:49:33
◼
►
which is they make a kind of popularization of a feature
00:49:38
◼
►
that is never gonna bring the power
00:49:41
◼
►
that the other apps have,
00:49:43
◼
►
but it will give the masses who don't use those apps,
00:49:46
◼
►
but just use the Apple Notes app,
00:49:48
◼
►
a little taste of that goodness.
00:49:50
◼
►
- Or people like Myke who find that feature interesting,
00:49:54
◼
►
but really complicated in every app that he's tried it in.
00:49:56
◼
►
- Yeah, yeah, and I do so much in Notes already,
00:50:00
◼
►
and I would love that feature there.
00:50:02
◼
►
And yet, that's not enough for me
00:50:04
◼
►
to go to a different Notes app, so I stay in Notes.
00:50:07
◼
►
But if Notes added it, I'd be like,
00:50:08
◼
►
"Oh yeah, I'll probably use that to interlink some Notes.
00:50:11
◼
►
"That'll be great."
00:50:12
◼
►
So I think they'll do it.
00:50:14
◼
►
- And you also refuse to give up in your Mac call column
00:50:17
◼
►
of predicting a new Pro app for the iPad from Apple.
00:50:21
◼
►
- Gonna keep on doing it.
00:50:22
◼
►
This is the year.
00:50:24
◼
►
This is the year. - So it's like
00:50:24
◼
►
way into three drafts this year. It is. It is. I just, I think it's gotta happen eventually,
00:50:33
◼
►
right? I really do believe that there is probably, at the very least, Final Cut Pro for the iPad
00:50:39
◼
►
happening. I just have to believe. I have to believe it. So I'm gonna choose it. Do
00:50:45
◼
►
you think this year we are going to see anything new for the home from Apple? I think there
00:50:53
◼
►
was a prediction in that episode of Connected that we're not really talking about this.
00:51:00
◼
►
And I like the idea of predicting a new home product from Apple because you keep it—and
00:51:08
◼
►
we're not competing here on this—but that idea—I think Apple does have a home strategy.
00:51:12
◼
►
I think they have found a home strategy, and I think we saw the beginning of it with the
00:51:15
◼
►
HomePod mini. I do think they are going in a new direction with this, between this and
00:51:22
◼
►
being part of the Matter Alliance,
00:51:24
◼
►
and I know that's been slow to come to fruition,
00:51:26
◼
►
but I do think they are getting their ducks in a row
00:51:30
◼
►
regarding the home.
00:51:32
◼
►
There have been reports,
00:51:33
◼
►
including from friend of the show, Mark Gurman, about this.
00:51:36
◼
►
I think the most likely home product from them
00:51:40
◼
►
is a HomePod with a screen and a camera
00:51:45
◼
►
that lives, I guess, lives in your kitchen,
00:51:48
◼
►
but really can live wherever you want.
00:51:50
◼
►
And the reason I say that is,
00:51:52
◼
►
Look, they've got tvOS, they've got iPadOS,
00:51:54
◼
►
and they've got iOS.
00:51:55
◼
►
They've got center stage.
00:51:57
◼
►
They've got the HomePod.
00:51:58
◼
►
- They've got photos, memories.
00:52:00
◼
►
- They got photos, memories.
00:52:01
◼
►
They got widgets.
00:52:02
◼
►
- They got FaceTime.
00:52:03
◼
►
- They have every single, it's a little bit like my comment
00:52:05
◼
►
about the iPad external display thing.
00:52:08
◼
►
They have FaceTime.
00:52:09
◼
►
They have, and they have app developers, right?
00:52:11
◼
►
So they, which is something,
00:52:12
◼
►
as somebody who has an Amazon Echo, like, oh boy,
00:52:16
◼
►
like they're so, the Amazon app store on their Fire,
00:52:21
◼
►
devices, their Fire TV devices, has everything, and it's Fire OS that runs the Amazon Echo,
00:52:29
◼
►
and they have nothing, almost nothing. I saw they added like Zoom the other day, but it's
00:52:34
◼
►
like all curated. And I think Apple has every opportunity to get in here and make a product
00:52:40
◼
►
that using a lot of the building blocks of what they've already got, probably mostly
00:52:44
◼
►
TV OS and build a HomePod with a screen that will let you do FaceTime, that will
00:52:52
◼
►
let you set up widgets that will all sync via iCloud with your other devices,
00:52:55
◼
►
that will be controllable via the Lady but also by via the touchscreen, and
00:53:00
◼
►
it'll have a center stage camera on it so that you can, wherever you are, you
00:53:04
◼
►
just place it there and it's your FaceTime appliance. I really think that
00:53:07
◼
►
product is gonna happen because, again, all the pieces are there and it's a
00:53:12
◼
►
natural new direction for Apple to go in the home that I think could actually be a good
00:53:20
◼
►
successful product. Plus I think Apple's whole privacy promise and all the people who are
00:53:24
◼
►
in Apple's ecosystem saying, "Well, you know, you're not going to have to give your data
00:53:28
◼
►
to Google, Amazon, or Facebook, but instead we will protect your privacy when you have
00:53:34
◼
►
this microphone and camera in your home and it works with all your other stuff and it
00:53:38
◼
►
lets you call your friends who have, you know, your family members who have an iPad or an
00:53:42
◼
►
iPhone, they don't have to get set up with Amazon's thing or Google's thing. So I think
00:53:48
◼
►
that that, you know, I want to hold that hope that they're going to do the soundbar product
00:53:51
◼
►
that I've been complaining about for a long time that's basically an Apple TV with a speaker
00:53:55
◼
►
and a center stage camera that you put by your TV and now boom, you've got the same
00:53:59
◼
►
thing but you've got it on your TV. I think that's less likely.
00:54:04
◼
►
It is much more likely that they make a HomePod screen,
00:54:09
◼
►
'cause that has so much in their wheelhouse.
00:54:11
◼
►
And it stands, yeah, it stands alone in a way
00:54:13
◼
►
that an Apple TV speaker thing is a new thing,
00:54:18
◼
►
and they have to check what they want it to be, right?
00:54:22
◼
►
Like, is this a category we wanna be in?
00:54:25
◼
►
But like, a HomePod with a screen,
00:54:27
◼
►
like, it's just sitting right there.
00:54:30
◼
►
And they've got, I personally think Center Stage
00:54:33
◼
►
was built for this product.
00:54:36
◼
►
I think center stage is gonna be everywhere.
00:54:38
◼
►
It's gonna be on Macs.
00:54:39
◼
►
I think it's gonna be, it's just on iPads right now,
00:54:42
◼
►
but I think it was built for this product.
00:54:43
◼
►
Like it feels like it was built for a product like this.
00:54:45
◼
►
'Cause you need, iPad you can pick up and move around, right?
00:54:49
◼
►
But one of these things is gonna be sitting somewhere.
00:54:52
◼
►
And what you really need with a device
00:54:55
◼
►
that is static like that is a dynamic widescreen camera
00:54:59
◼
►
that can pan around.
00:55:01
◼
►
And so I think that center stage,
00:55:03
◼
►
we saw it first on the iPad,
00:55:05
◼
►
but I think it's built for this product.
00:55:07
◼
►
I really believe that.
00:55:08
◼
►
So maybe I'm wrong, but I'm outside the black box.
00:55:12
◼
►
I don't get to look inside and see what's going on at Apple.
00:55:14
◼
►
I just have to guess,
00:55:15
◼
►
but it feels very strong to me that that's the product.
00:55:18
◼
►
- And finally, is 2022 the year of the headset?
00:55:22
◼
►
- I say, yes.
00:55:25
◼
►
I think Apple will release something
00:55:26
◼
►
that you put on your face in 2022.
00:55:31
◼
►
I do. I am really skeptical. So our friend James Thompson went all in on that episode of Connected
00:55:41
◼
►
with AR stuff. I'm a little like I'm a believer in this product. I think it's gonna happen.
00:55:46
◼
►
Whether I'm a believer in its success, I don't know, but I believe it will happen.
00:55:49
◼
►
You believe that the Apple's gonna make it.
00:55:51
◼
►
I think the goggles or whatever it is, I think it'll be 22. I think it's gonna ship.
00:56:00
◼
►
I don't think it's gonna be pitched as a product for everyone.
00:56:06
◼
►
I feel like it's gonna be so expensive and so early days that they're gonna pitch it for developers,
00:56:16
◼
►
that they'll announce it at WWDC, and they'll say, "This is coming. It's a developer kit.
00:56:21
◼
►
We want you all to write apps for it." And then next year, there'll be one for the masses,
00:56:27
◼
►
and that next year it won't be that one. It'll be another model that's for the masses.
00:56:30
◼
►
It's certainly possible that Apple will do that and say it is for the masses, and developers can
00:56:36
◼
►
get their hands on a developer kit. Maybe the developer kit is just a thing that you have to
00:56:40
◼
►
plug into a Mac that is a, you know, it's like part of it but not the whole story, and then they'll
00:56:46
◼
►
ship the real one in the fall. But if I had to lay down money, I would lay down money. That first one
00:56:53
◼
►
is not gonna be, like people will be able to buy it,
00:56:57
◼
►
but that it's not gonna be pitched for regular people,
00:56:59
◼
►
because I think it's gonna be two early days,
00:57:01
◼
►
and I think Apple's not gonna want to try and say,
00:57:06
◼
►
put this under the Christmas tree, right?
00:57:08
◼
►
I think it may be gonna be a little too early for that.
00:57:10
◼
►
Could be wrong about that, but I,
00:57:13
◼
►
so I'm gonna try to stake out this middle ground
00:57:15
◼
►
where I think it is gonna happen,
00:57:16
◼
►
but I think it's gonna be not quite ready
00:57:18
◼
►
for the masses until 23.
00:57:21
◼
►
- Yeah, I can't decide on this,
00:57:22
◼
►
just hearing you talk about it,
00:57:24
◼
►
I can't yet put my finger on what I think they'll do
00:57:28
◼
►
because anything they announce,
00:57:31
◼
►
it will be the thing that people think is for everyone.
00:57:34
◼
►
Doesn't matter what they do or how they say it,
00:57:36
◼
►
it just does not matter.
00:57:37
◼
►
If they release a thing and they're like,
00:57:40
◼
►
this is an early days product for us, it costs $3,000,
00:57:44
◼
►
they will just be like, Apple's headset,
00:57:46
◼
►
Oculus competitor costs $3,000.
00:57:49
◼
►
There's no way around it.
00:57:51
◼
►
- That's not entirely true though
00:57:52
◼
►
Because if they announce it and say,
00:57:53
◼
►
we're announcing this, there's a developer kit hardware
00:57:55
◼
►
that's gonna be available this summer,
00:57:57
◼
►
we love our developers,
00:57:58
◼
►
and next year we will be shipping a product to consumers.
00:58:01
◼
►
And they completely just say, this is a developer kit.
00:58:05
◼
►
We're not selling this to the general public.
00:58:08
◼
►
They could get away with it.
00:58:09
◼
►
But yeah, I agree, the temptation is gonna be strong.
00:58:11
◼
►
- The other part of what I didn't mention is I just,
00:58:15
◼
►
I also struggle to like, 'cause again, I just can't decide,
00:58:18
◼
►
can I imagine that they would announce it that way?
00:58:20
◼
►
would I imagine that they would only be able to announce something like that, or they only would announce something like this,
00:58:25
◼
►
if they also showed off what the consumer product will be.
00:58:28
◼
►
Right. Well, this is—
00:58:29
◼
►
Like, I can't decide.
00:58:31
◼
►
Their classic way of doing it would be that, right?
00:58:33
◼
►
Which is, the challenge is, how do you get your developers to write really what need to be new apps,
00:58:38
◼
►
or at least dramatically changed apps to support AR?
00:58:41
◼
►
And I know they've been doing it on the iPhone for a long time,
00:58:44
◼
►
and so those things will be able to be picked up.
00:58:46
◼
►
But the question is really how much do the developers think
00:58:50
◼
►
they can get something done without really having access
00:58:54
◼
►
to this until it's essentially on shelves
00:58:57
◼
►
for the general public.
00:58:58
◼
►
And that's a tough one, but it's certainly possible.
00:59:01
◼
►
And the way you do it if you're Apple, honestly,
00:59:03
◼
►
is you pitch it as an Oculus Quest, right?
00:59:05
◼
►
You pitch it as a VR gaming thing
00:59:09
◼
►
and say it's the start and this is gonna be great for games
00:59:14
◼
►
and we've got all these developers
00:59:15
◼
►
who are working on games and they'll,
00:59:17
◼
►
more game demos for Apple events, woo-hoo.
00:59:19
◼
►
- Games and experiences, right?
00:59:21
◼
►
Like that's gonna be V1.
00:59:22
◼
►
- Yeah, but it'll be expensive
00:59:24
◼
►
and what they're really kind of doing is they're hedging
00:59:27
◼
►
and then saying it's, you know, it is out now,
00:59:29
◼
►
but you know, but then they'll iterate
00:59:32
◼
►
and iterate and iterate and that's very Apple.
00:59:34
◼
►
I think that's the most like what they've done in the past.
00:59:36
◼
►
I just, I do wonder if they will get to the point
00:59:39
◼
►
where they're like, we cannot ship this
00:59:41
◼
►
to the general public, they will kill us.
00:59:43
◼
►
let's call this the developer kit.
00:59:46
◼
►
'Cause we know that they're already
00:59:47
◼
►
developing the next one, right?
00:59:48
◼
►
Mark Gurman has that report,
00:59:50
◼
►
that he's reporting on specs for the 23 version
00:59:54
◼
►
of the AR headset, right?
00:59:55
◼
►
So the question is, is the 22 version a developer kit,
00:59:58
◼
►
or is it a product for consumers?
01:00:00
◼
►
And I don't know, if I had to pick,
01:00:03
◼
►
I wanna be a little conservative here and say developer kit,
01:00:06
◼
►
'cause I'm not entirely convinced
01:00:08
◼
►
that Apple is gonna have a product this year,
01:00:11
◼
►
but they might, they could do it.
01:00:13
◼
►
it would be very Apple to put the burden on all developers
01:00:16
◼
►
to just figure it out.
01:00:17
◼
►
- And I still wonder,
01:00:21
◼
►
like again, I go back and forth on this,
01:00:23
◼
►
if they'll even show this off at WWDC,
01:00:25
◼
►
like I kind of feel like they might take the Apple Watch
01:00:29
◼
►
approach of two events,
01:00:32
◼
►
so like that are absolutely focused on,
01:00:36
◼
►
they said that, you know, they did the,
01:00:37
◼
►
here's the thing event,
01:00:39
◼
►
and then like six months later,
01:00:41
◼
►
here is the, we're gonna remind you
01:00:43
◼
►
and actually launch the product
01:00:44
◼
►
and show you what it is now event.
01:00:47
◼
►
- So let me give you a scenario.
01:00:49
◼
►
This might be the actual scenario,
01:00:51
◼
►
which is what if at WWDC,
01:00:54
◼
►
they announced that they're going to do an AR product
01:00:56
◼
►
and they show off the AR product.
01:00:58
◼
►
And they say the AR product is shipping this fall.
01:01:01
◼
►
And they announced it at WWDC
01:01:05
◼
►
or maybe before then or maybe after then,
01:01:07
◼
►
but they announced it at an event, let's just say.
01:01:09
◼
►
They announced it at an event.
01:01:11
◼
►
And as part of that event, what they announce is,
01:01:13
◼
►
developers can get something.
01:01:16
◼
►
And maybe that something is the hardware in advance,
01:01:21
◼
►
or maybe that something is,
01:01:23
◼
►
like I said earlier in this conversation,
01:01:26
◼
►
a not quite the hardware, but something you can attach.
01:01:30
◼
►
- A HTC Vive you can plug in.
01:01:34
◼
►
I mean, it could be something like that, right?
01:01:36
◼
►
- Yeah, right, something where you're basically like,
01:01:38
◼
►
we're gonna give developers something
01:01:39
◼
►
that they can plug into a Mac and develop their apps with.
01:01:44
◼
►
Because that's the part that keeps coming back to me
01:01:48
◼
►
is how do you launch this product
01:01:51
◼
►
without having developers actually be able to use
01:01:54
◼
►
this product or a thing that is meant
01:01:57
◼
►
to emulate this product?
01:01:59
◼
►
So that's my question is, you know,
01:02:02
◼
►
and maybe it's as simple as they're gonna ship products
01:02:05
◼
►
to developers and there's gonna be like a $3,000 deposit
01:02:09
◼
►
and that gets refunded or they get store credit
01:02:11
◼
►
or whatever at the end of the process
01:02:13
◼
►
and it's locked to their ID and, you know,
01:02:16
◼
►
they could do it that way.
01:02:18
◼
►
And it's not quite the final,
01:02:20
◼
►
but it's something for developers.
01:02:21
◼
►
I don't know.
01:02:22
◼
►
Like it's a good question.
01:02:24
◼
►
Like we'll have a limited number
01:02:26
◼
►
and you'll have to qualify
01:02:27
◼
►
and they could do it that way too.
01:02:28
◼
►
But I get hung up on the developer part of this
01:02:30
◼
►
'cause I don't think they can just dump this on the world
01:02:32
◼
►
and say, "Hey, developers make great AR apps on the iPhone
01:02:36
◼
►
and they'll just work."
01:02:37
◼
►
Like, I don't think that's gonna do it.
01:02:39
◼
►
So I need the rest of that story
01:02:41
◼
►
because they wanna launch this platform
01:02:42
◼
►
with good apps on it.
01:02:44
◼
►
And they can't surprise the developers and do that.
01:02:47
◼
►
So that's the thing to watch honestly,
01:02:49
◼
►
in all of this is what,
01:02:50
◼
►
if they're launching a brand new platform,
01:02:52
◼
►
what is the developer story gonna be
01:02:53
◼
►
and how do they prime the pump with developers,
01:02:56
◼
►
assuming that their AR kit demos the last five years
01:03:01
◼
►
are not seen as priming the pump.
01:03:03
◼
►
- Well, the only thing we have to compare this to
01:03:06
◼
►
is the Apple watch, right?
01:03:08
◼
►
like in recent times, like the only product,
01:03:11
◼
►
like brand new product needs development,
01:03:13
◼
►
new operating system, the whole nine yards.
01:03:17
◼
►
And with the Apple Watch,
01:03:18
◼
►
they said they did those two separate events
01:03:20
◼
►
and they also did the thing where they brought developers in
01:03:25
◼
►
for a few days, you remember that?
01:03:27
◼
►
- Right, oh sure, sure.
01:03:28
◼
►
- And that was how people got to try out their software
01:03:33
◼
►
on Apple hardware.
01:03:37
◼
►
- The reason I'm saying this,
01:03:38
◼
►
'cause like James is saying in the chat,
01:03:40
◼
►
be kind of like how they did the DTK,
01:03:43
◼
►
not the fastest chip but functional.
01:03:45
◼
►
But there isn't like the DTK was a Mac mini
01:03:47
◼
►
where they put a different,
01:03:49
◼
►
the Apple do not have something.
01:03:51
◼
►
- Here's the one thing that,
01:03:52
◼
►
and David pointed this out in the chat
01:03:55
◼
►
and I think he's right, which is,
01:03:56
◼
►
the other way they could go is they could say,
01:03:59
◼
►
we're gonna do a little iPhone holder
01:04:02
◼
►
that you put on your face, like the Google Daydream.
01:04:04
◼
►
And you can build your apps on that.
01:04:08
◼
►
And then they'll be great on the new hardware
01:04:09
◼
►
'cause it'll be more powerful than your iPhone.
01:04:11
◼
►
- They may also do a thing where they say,
01:04:12
◼
►
and some of you can apply to come to a kitchen
01:04:16
◼
►
and we will let you load it onto pre-release hardware
01:04:20
◼
►
provided you signed a 25,000 page embargo, like NDA.
01:04:24
◼
►
'Cause like, this is my issue with the,
01:04:27
◼
►
is what they're announcing, right?
01:04:29
◼
►
Like, are they actually going to be announcing something
01:04:32
◼
►
that will be available for anyone to buy
01:04:34
◼
►
at the end of the year?
01:04:35
◼
►
If that's the case, they're not sending those to developers
01:04:38
◼
►
six months in advance because it's not done.
01:04:41
◼
►
So I don't know how, you see,
01:04:44
◼
►
like I'm struggling with this balance here.
01:04:46
◼
►
- That's why, I mean, but it could be done,
01:04:48
◼
►
the hardware could be done and the software could be broken
01:04:50
◼
►
and it could be very much a DTK kind of situation
01:04:53
◼
►
where it's just for, it's non-final hardware,
01:04:56
◼
►
but they're building 2000 of them to send out.
01:05:00
◼
►
- All the DTKs were like, they were existing hardware
01:05:05
◼
►
that they put new guts inside.
01:05:07
◼
►
And Apple doesn't have existing AR headset hardware.
01:05:11
◼
►
- Yeah, well, this is, so this is the thing.
01:05:13
◼
►
- We're gonna argue this for the next six months, right?
01:05:15
◼
►
This is the conversation of the year.
01:05:17
◼
►
- 'Cause I do think that there will be something
01:05:19
◼
►
you put on your face this year.
01:05:21
◼
►
The question is, what form does it take
01:05:23
◼
►
and what the developer story is about it.
01:05:26
◼
►
That's the great, and Apple has options here.
01:05:28
◼
►
I think in the end, it comes down to Apple's confidence
01:05:31
◼
►
level in two things, confidence level
01:05:33
◼
►
in the quality of the product,
01:05:34
◼
►
and confidence level in the developer story.
01:05:38
◼
►
And, you know, they could be misguided about those things.
01:05:41
◼
►
But I do think in the end,
01:05:41
◼
►
those are the two things that will decide this.
01:05:43
◼
►
Is, do they really think this product is enough
01:05:46
◼
►
of a product to sell it to consumers, you know,
01:05:49
◼
►
and to take the hits of it being judged
01:05:51
◼
►
as a regular old consumer product?
01:05:53
◼
►
Which they might, they might be like,
01:05:55
◼
►
you know, we always iterate.
01:05:57
◼
►
This first one is gonna be great,
01:05:58
◼
►
but the next one's gonna be vastly better,
01:06:00
◼
►
just like the Apple Watch.
01:06:02
◼
►
You iterate for a few years and it gets way better.
01:06:04
◼
►
But the question is, is it enough yet?
01:06:08
◼
►
And I think, you know, the truth is that Apple cares more
01:06:12
◼
►
about being seen in public than it cares about developers.
01:06:15
◼
►
Sorry, developers, you know it's true.
01:06:17
◼
►
And so it's a hard, I have a hard time imagining
01:06:20
◼
►
that Apple wouldn't announce something
01:06:22
◼
►
and ship something the same year
01:06:23
◼
►
because everybody would be talking about it
01:06:27
◼
►
and they wouldn't have a product.
01:06:28
◼
►
So, so yeah, I think the truth is the biggest,
01:06:31
◼
►
The best scenario is they'll have some story to tell developers, but they're still going
01:06:34
◼
►
to ship it by the end of the year.
01:06:35
◼
►
Yeah, I think it's true.
01:06:37
◼
►
This episode is brought to you by Fitbod.
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of this show and RelayFN. So we spoke about Apple in 2022. Let's speak about what we're
01:09:01
◼
►
doing in 2022.
01:09:03
◼
►
Yeah, let's do it.
01:09:05
◼
►
People might be familiar, you know, like if you listen to one of my other shows, Cortex,
01:09:08
◼
►
New Year planning and New Year thinking is a pretty important part of my life
01:09:15
◼
►
now, for many reasons. Me and Grey do a thing called Yearly Themes. We've
01:09:21
◼
►
been doing it for many many years now, where we come up with a word
01:09:25
◼
►
or a phrase that acts as a guide for us throughout the year. It's something
01:09:30
◼
►
that we can look towards and be like "this is something that I want, if I
01:09:33
◼
►
focus towards this thing it will improve something in my life in some way" and
01:09:37
◼
►
And then I work out, for me, like I work out a bunch of things that I can do that can ladder up to this idea.
01:09:43
◼
►
So for me, my theme of 2022 is called the Year of Structure.
01:09:47
◼
►
I really recommend episode Cortex-123. We speak about all this in more detail.
01:09:52
◼
►
Yes, highly, I found it incredibly inspirational. It's really good.
01:09:57
◼
►
Even if you don't normally listen to Cortex, I would say listen to this episode. It's very good.
01:10:02
◼
►
I appreciate that. Thank you so much.
01:10:03
◼
►
Basically, for me in 2022, I want to have a better structure in place to handle the
01:10:09
◼
►
various responsibilities that I have across my businesses and in my personal life, but
01:10:13
◼
►
also allow for unstructured time because I want to have more time in my work week where
01:10:19
◼
►
I have big chunks of time where I can work on whatever thing is pulling me at that moment
01:10:23
◼
►
and really have like clear runway for things.
01:10:27
◼
►
But this is also at the same time while balancing the things that I want to need to be worked
01:10:32
◼
►
Usually for me with a yearly theme, I start the year and I just do all of what I want
01:10:41
◼
►
So like, you know, I'll be like, oh, okay, I've, my theme is X and that means all what
01:10:45
◼
►
I need to do is this, this, this, and this, and I'll get what I want.
01:10:47
◼
►
But the difference for me this time is I'm starting this year.
01:10:51
◼
►
I know what I want to achieve out of this, but I don't know exactly how to get there.
01:10:56
◼
►
And so I'm going to be spending a big chunk of the year working out.
01:10:59
◼
►
All right, some stuff's gonna get cut down
01:11:02
◼
►
or reorganized or moved around.
01:11:04
◼
►
How am I gonna do that?
01:11:06
◼
►
I actually don't know.
01:11:07
◼
►
And also, I've said this to some close friends recently,
01:11:11
◼
►
the end of the year is a terrible time to do this
01:11:14
◼
►
because you've already started on next year's planning.
01:11:16
◼
►
So I have too many times made wrong decisions
01:11:20
◼
►
or quick decisions or pulled back on decisions
01:11:24
◼
►
for things that I wanna cut down
01:11:25
◼
►
because I'm making these decisions on like December 15th.
01:11:29
◼
►
So I'm going to be spending at least the first half
01:11:31
◼
►
of this year working out what stays,
01:11:34
◼
►
what goes in 2023 for all of the various things that I do,
01:11:38
◼
►
and then spending the time actually putting those plans
01:11:41
◼
►
in place to make sure that it's good for next year.
01:11:43
◼
►
So there's like a bunch of little things
01:11:45
◼
►
that I'm going to do to help with the immediate,
01:11:47
◼
►
but then it's also about the future.
01:11:50
◼
►
-I would argue that this is actually in keeping
01:11:54
◼
►
with the whole concept of themes,
01:11:56
◼
►
in that what I like about themes,
01:11:59
◼
►
and I had to explain themes to Lauren
01:12:00
◼
►
because we had brunch with you and Adina
01:12:03
◼
►
and you talked about your themes.
01:12:04
◼
►
And then we got in the car and we were in the car
01:12:06
◼
►
for a very, very long time driving back home.
01:12:09
◼
►
And she was like, "What is this themes business?"
01:12:13
◼
►
And the way I like to think of the themes is,
01:12:16
◼
►
it's a framework,
01:12:17
◼
►
rather than being like New Year's resolutions,
01:12:19
◼
►
it's a framework that you commit to
01:12:22
◼
►
to analyze everything you do.
01:12:26
◼
►
It's a rubric to use to grade every move
01:12:31
◼
►
you're thinking of making in a year.
01:12:32
◼
►
It's like, remember structure.
01:12:35
◼
►
And the beauty of that is that instead of it being you
01:12:38
◼
►
in sort of saying, here are some goals for the year
01:12:41
◼
►
in January and seeing if you live up to them.
01:12:43
◼
►
Instead, you say, this year, really think about
01:12:48
◼
►
how you wanna structure it or whatever your theme is.
01:12:50
◼
►
And then everything that comes up during the year,
01:12:53
◼
►
you begin applying that.
01:12:54
◼
►
And I think it's, first off,
01:12:55
◼
►
I think it's easier to internalize that,
01:12:57
◼
►
although it does take a little time.
01:12:58
◼
►
And that it also means that it is living with you
01:13:01
◼
►
because instead of having a thing that you said you would do
01:13:04
◼
►
and you failed at it,
01:13:05
◼
►
instead you have this thing on your shoulder
01:13:09
◼
►
that is sort of evaluating everything you do for the year
01:13:12
◼
►
through the lens of the theme that you chose.
01:13:14
◼
►
And so what you did, I think actually,
01:13:17
◼
►
is it perfectly in keeping with this concept,
01:13:20
◼
►
which is you've got this theme now
01:13:22
◼
►
and you don't have your whole plan worked out,
01:13:26
◼
►
but you're going to spend the year
01:13:28
◼
►
analyzing everything you do using the theme of structure.
01:13:32
◼
►
- Yeah, it's just for me,
01:13:34
◼
►
the ways that I've been doing in recent years,
01:13:36
◼
►
it's kind of coming from the opposite side,
01:13:38
◼
►
but it is still, as you very rightly point out,
01:13:41
◼
►
in keeping with the idea of like,
01:13:43
◼
►
I've referred to it as like a North Star for a while.
01:13:46
◼
►
It's like, it's something that just guides you.
01:13:48
◼
►
So yeah, this kind of where I am,
01:13:50
◼
►
where I'm like, basically I just noticed in 2021
01:13:53
◼
►
that I just felt like I was just,
01:13:56
◼
►
I had way too much stuff going on
01:13:58
◼
►
and I don't want to have as much stuff going on.
01:14:01
◼
►
I was talking to Steven about this recently,
01:14:06
◼
►
I'm sure he won't mind me saying,
01:14:08
◼
►
'cause he's cut down on some stuff too,
01:14:10
◼
►
going into the year.
01:14:11
◼
►
And one of the things that we were talking about,
01:14:14
◼
►
and I think I was kind of coming to the realization
01:14:18
◼
►
as we was talking about it,
01:14:19
◼
►
and it was something that his wife had said to him,
01:14:20
◼
►
of like, the two of us, we're kind of working still
01:14:25
◼
►
like we're trying to get our business off the ground.
01:14:32
◼
►
- Like, we're very much still like,
01:14:34
◼
►
we're trying to be, like we're scrappy,
01:14:36
◼
►
and it's like, but we're not,
01:14:37
◼
►
we have a very established, well-running business
01:14:40
◼
►
at this point, and maybe that the two of us
01:14:44
◼
►
do not need to be running ourselves into the ground
01:14:47
◼
►
as much as we do when we have a pretty well-oiled machine.
01:14:52
◼
►
And it was just like a really interesting thing
01:14:55
◼
►
that I've been thinking about a lot.
01:14:56
◼
►
- So all of us, you know, you and me and Steven,
01:15:01
◼
►
and some other people we know,
01:15:03
◼
►
it's been seven or eight-ish years
01:15:05
◼
►
that we've been out on our own.
01:15:09
◼
►
- And that initial phase is very much,
01:15:11
◼
►
how do I establish myself?
01:15:14
◼
►
How do I build things that I can do
01:15:17
◼
►
to have it be my career?
01:15:18
◼
►
How do I make it happen?
01:15:21
◼
►
It's this building phase.
01:15:22
◼
►
And it's also a scrambling phase, right?
01:15:24
◼
►
'Cause it's like, I gotta put food on the table.
01:15:26
◼
►
I gotta, you know, I'm gonna have to not go out
01:15:29
◼
►
on my own anymore.
01:15:30
◼
►
I'm gonna have to leave and go back
01:15:32
◼
►
to what I was doing before if I can't make this work.
01:15:35
◼
►
So you end up in that phase.
01:15:36
◼
►
And then, you know, but the thing is,
01:15:38
◼
►
you leave that phase at some point.
01:15:40
◼
►
You need to leave that phase, I should say,
01:15:42
◼
►
and stop thinking about it in those terms
01:15:44
◼
►
and evaluate it in a different way
01:15:46
◼
►
because the danger is that you build yourself a new prison.
01:15:50
◼
►
The danger is you escape the old prison.
01:15:53
◼
►
There's a cartoon I have from web comic name, Alex Norris,
01:15:57
◼
►
and it's about a freelancer and it's like, I am free.
01:16:01
◼
►
And then they build a new prison for themselves.
01:16:04
◼
►
Oh no, right?
01:16:05
◼
►
But there's so much truth in that.
01:16:07
◼
►
Like you need to not build your own prison.
01:16:11
◼
►
The goal is to be able to continue to adjust and adapt.
01:16:15
◼
►
And the last thing you wanna do is be free
01:16:18
◼
►
and build your own business and then burnout
01:16:20
◼
►
on the business you built.
01:16:21
◼
►
The last thing you wanna do.
01:16:23
◼
►
And I've obviously been thinking about this too.
01:16:25
◼
►
I have tried, and I talked about this back
01:16:28
◼
►
when I was doing free agents with David Sparks,
01:16:30
◼
►
about the importance of saying no,
01:16:33
◼
►
'cause I also dropped a bunch of stuff for the new year.
01:16:36
◼
►
And it's very much, that's sort of, I don't have a theme,
01:16:39
◼
►
but that's sort of what I've been trying to do.
01:16:41
◼
►
It's very much like you can't do anything new
01:16:45
◼
►
if you're always continuing to do everything
01:16:48
◼
►
you've been doing up to this point.
01:16:49
◼
►
You have to say no and close some stuff down.
01:16:52
◼
►
Otherwise you will never be open to new possibilities.
01:16:55
◼
►
- Your theme is called the year of opportunity, Jason.
01:16:58
◼
►
- Okay, thanks, great.
01:17:01
◼
►
The idea, I don't think that's how I would brand it,
01:17:04
◼
►
but I'm, maybe, we'll workshop it.
01:17:08
◼
►
But the idea there is you need to be,
01:17:11
◼
►
it's opportunity cost, right?
01:17:13
◼
►
Like you're not, it's not just the work you put in on X,
01:17:17
◼
►
it's also that if you're doing X,
01:17:18
◼
►
you can't do whatever might come along and be a new thing.
01:17:22
◼
►
And I think we also tend all of us to overwork ourselves
01:17:28
◼
►
because it's hard to keep a balance when you're,
01:17:32
◼
►
first off, you're doing something that you like,
01:17:34
◼
►
which is great, but you're also,
01:17:36
◼
►
you are working all the time.
01:17:39
◼
►
And especially if you're working,
01:17:40
◼
►
at least you have an office to go to,
01:17:42
◼
►
but like Steven and I are working on the premises
01:17:45
◼
►
and it's a challenge.
01:17:46
◼
►
So reevaluating, taking a moment to reevaluate
01:17:50
◼
►
what you're doing.
01:17:52
◼
►
New Year is totally arbitrary.
01:17:54
◼
►
It is just the earth passing through a particular part
01:17:57
◼
►
of its orbit around the sun.
01:17:58
◼
►
It could be any time, but I think it has some advantages.
01:18:03
◼
►
Not only just it is a reset time, but also for us,
01:18:07
◼
►
it comes not only after the holidays,
01:18:08
◼
►
like it does for everybody, but it comes after that
01:18:10
◼
►
kind of the peak of the Apple year in the fall,
01:18:14
◼
►
it's not a bad time.
01:18:15
◼
►
This is when we've got some runway to do stuff
01:18:18
◼
►
before the kind of wild Apple stuff that starts in June
01:18:22
◼
►
and really goes through November.
01:18:24
◼
►
So now is a good time to do it.
01:18:26
◼
►
And so, you know, I actually in December had a similar thing
01:18:30
◼
►
where I realized I needed to do,
01:18:32
◼
►
I used to, when I worked at IDG, I used to do these things.
01:18:35
◼
►
I'd go over to somebody's house, one of my editors,
01:18:40
◼
►
one of my managers lived in, still does, in Berkeley.
01:18:43
◼
►
And I would take a couple of senior managers
01:18:45
◼
►
and we'd go to his house and like sit
01:18:48
◼
►
at his dining room table for the day and get, you know,
01:18:50
◼
►
and talk about like,
01:18:51
◼
►
it's just good to get out of your head space
01:18:53
◼
►
and go somewhere and sort of think about
01:18:54
◼
►
what you're wanting to do.
01:18:55
◼
►
And I realized in December that I hadn't done that.
01:18:59
◼
►
And that I actually, I wanted to do that.
01:19:01
◼
►
And in my house is where I work.
01:19:03
◼
►
So I can't get out of my own head space in my house.
01:19:08
◼
►
So I had that moment where I'm actually gonna go
01:19:10
◼
►
away, it's not quite a graycation, which is what CGP --
01:19:15
◼
►
well, it is kind of a graycation,
01:19:16
◼
►
but we're just driving, like, an hour away,
01:19:19
◼
►
where our friends have a rental house, and there's nobody --
01:19:22
◼
►
-Doesn't matter where it is. -Yeah.
01:19:24
◼
►
-The idea of the graycation being, you go somewhere else.
01:19:28
◼
►
-And since our friends have a rental house,
01:19:29
◼
►
and nobody is using their rental house
01:19:31
◼
►
in the week after New Year's, right?
01:19:34
◼
►
Like, nobody is -- So they're like,
01:19:35
◼
►
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can go there."
01:19:36
◼
►
So I'm going to go there for, like, three days,
01:19:39
◼
►
starting this evening, actually.
01:19:41
◼
►
And I'm gonna have a couple of days
01:19:42
◼
►
where I am just focused on that,
01:19:45
◼
►
that sort of thinking big picture stuff.
01:19:46
◼
►
Because I do think that's important.
01:19:48
◼
►
And I think one of the challenges of working for yourself
01:19:49
◼
►
and working from home is that you're in your own head.
01:19:52
◼
►
You're no longer, it's harder.
01:19:54
◼
►
You have to work at it more to kind of step out
01:19:57
◼
►
of the day-to-day and think about what you're doing.
01:20:00
◼
►
And it's so important to be able to step out of it
01:20:03
◼
►
if you can manage it, to step out of that context
01:20:07
◼
►
and not have the day-to-day going on
01:20:09
◼
►
and try to think bigger picture thoughts
01:20:12
◼
►
and focus on stuff that you don't give yourself permission
01:20:16
◼
►
to focus on most of the time.
01:20:18
◼
►
- This is like something, as you say,
01:20:20
◼
►
I'm trying to build some of this in more generally
01:20:23
◼
►
into my life, right?
01:20:24
◼
►
Like to have that unstructured time.
01:20:26
◼
►
'Cause it's very valuable.
01:20:28
◼
►
And it's like to go back to something I was saying
01:20:30
◼
►
a minute ago, I think one of the reasons
01:20:33
◼
►
that I've really noticed and been feeling this feeling
01:20:35
◼
►
of like the kind of like starting out mentality
01:20:40
◼
►
is that me and Grey started a business together.
01:20:44
◼
►
And we're working on various products currently
01:20:47
◼
►
for the theme stuff.
01:20:50
◼
►
We have a thing called the Theme System Journal.
01:20:51
◼
►
It's a journal that's built around this idea.
01:20:53
◼
►
And that's the thing.
01:20:54
◼
►
And we're working on multiple various product things.
01:20:59
◼
►
And that's like very much in that,
01:21:02
◼
►
I can't think of a different word,
01:21:03
◼
►
so I'm just gonna say it,
01:21:04
◼
►
that hustling phase of like we're trying to make it happen.
01:21:09
◼
►
- And that takes a lot of energy and effort.
01:21:11
◼
►
And so it's now having brought a new one of those in,
01:21:15
◼
►
I'm starting to realize how much I'm still doing that
01:21:18
◼
►
in my very established business.
01:21:22
◼
►
- And so, you know, balancing those two things together
01:21:25
◼
►
over the last year or so is really making me realize
01:21:28
◼
►
that to be most effective to both, I need better structure.
01:21:33
◼
►
One of those things was like,
01:21:35
◼
►
one of the ways I tried to do with this was,
01:21:38
◼
►
I'll take no time off, terrible idea.
01:21:41
◼
►
And was really, really bad on me towards the end of the year
01:21:44
◼
►
and I've remembered the value of it,
01:21:47
◼
►
kind of taking my really long vacation
01:21:49
◼
►
and then taking a bit of time over the holidays
01:21:52
◼
►
and I'm feeling way better now.
01:21:54
◼
►
- Yeah, that's another thing about the New Year's thing
01:21:59
◼
►
is it is a pretty good time.
01:22:01
◼
►
I always feel pretty refreshed at New Year's
01:22:04
◼
►
because I've come off of a few weeks
01:22:05
◼
►
that are low to no effort.
01:22:09
◼
►
And that means it's a vacation essentially.
01:22:11
◼
►
Like it wasn't a vacation per se, we didn't go anywhere.
01:22:15
◼
►
But you know, I, my mom came and visited,
01:22:18
◼
►
I cleared off my schedule
01:22:19
◼
►
so I could spend more time with her.
01:22:21
◼
►
I ended up, you know, we prerecorded some stuff.
01:22:23
◼
►
So the amount of stuff I had to do
01:22:25
◼
►
was just so much less than it usually is.
01:22:26
◼
►
That's a really good opportunity
01:22:28
◼
►
because your batteries are a little more refreshed.
01:22:31
◼
►
and then you had your vacation on top of that.
01:22:34
◼
►
And I think that's all,
01:22:35
◼
►
that primes this to be a pretty good time.
01:22:38
◼
►
It doesn't have to be,
01:22:40
◼
►
it's not the best time for everybody,
01:22:41
◼
►
but you're looking for a proxy.
01:22:43
◼
►
You're looking for something to hang your hat on about this.
01:22:48
◼
►
And if I was in a different business
01:22:52
◼
►
with a different kind of calendar,
01:22:53
◼
►
I might look at it differently,
01:22:54
◼
►
but January is not a bad proxy.
01:22:56
◼
►
'Cause it really is, I feel like,
01:22:59
◼
►
the Apple year heats up in June,
01:23:03
◼
►
and then September and October and part of November
01:23:05
◼
►
are the peak of it.
01:23:07
◼
►
And then December is sort of a cooling off period
01:23:11
◼
►
kind of retreating and healing.
01:23:13
◼
►
And then January is like, okay, what are the new things?
01:23:15
◼
►
It's a perfect kind of fit.
01:23:16
◼
►
I wanna mention, you mentioned Steven doing fewer things.
01:23:22
◼
►
Some of that impacts me,
01:23:23
◼
►
but it's always a good time to reevaluate stuff.
01:23:28
◼
►
And so I'll just mention the things that I'm doing
01:23:30
◼
►
to try and take care of myself,
01:23:32
◼
►
not only to open myself up to new things,
01:23:34
◼
►
but also things that I felt like I needed to do
01:23:38
◼
►
that I've decided I don't need to do anymore
01:23:40
◼
►
because it's a, I don't need to do this
01:23:43
◼
►
and I can hand it to somebody else.
01:23:45
◼
►
And it gives me either one of two things,
01:23:48
◼
►
which is either more opportunities
01:23:49
◼
►
to do something different or more time to use in a way
01:23:55
◼
►
that is healthy for me instead of it being more work.
01:23:59
◼
►
So it's either taking work off the pile
01:24:02
◼
►
or it's opening a space on the pile
01:24:04
◼
►
for a different kind of work.
01:24:05
◼
►
Those are the sort of two things.
01:24:06
◼
►
So Steven and I stopped doing lift off regularly.
01:24:11
◼
►
That was a decision that we made in December.
01:24:14
◼
►
We're gonna do, we're not killing it.
01:24:16
◼
►
We're gonna do specials when we,
01:24:18
◼
►
when the mood strikes essentially,
01:24:22
◼
►
which for us is, you know, we love space stuff,
01:24:25
◼
►
but the fact is it's not our primary job.
01:24:27
◼
►
There are a whole other podcasts where people,
01:24:30
◼
►
in fact, a podcast that's very nice,
01:24:34
◼
►
just Anthony Colangelo, who's the host of that podcast,
01:24:37
◼
►
Mikko, he quit his job
01:24:41
◼
►
and he's gonna do space stuff full-time.
01:24:43
◼
►
And it's like, well, first off, that's great,
01:24:45
◼
►
but also like Steven and I
01:24:47
◼
►
are not gonna do space stuff full-time.
01:24:49
◼
►
And it was a little podcast.
01:24:51
◼
►
It's not a big portion of what we do,
01:24:53
◼
►
but it was a grind of doing Space News several hours
01:24:58
◼
►
every other week, and we just decided to stop.
01:25:01
◼
►
And we're gonna keep doing the part that is really fun,
01:25:04
◼
►
but we're gonna stop doing the other part,
01:25:05
◼
►
because one, I don't think that we are ever going to be
01:25:08
◼
►
the preeminent space podcast,
01:25:09
◼
►
'cause we're not gonna devote that much time to it.
01:25:11
◼
►
Like, we can't justify devoting that much time to it.
01:25:15
◼
►
It's not our primary job.
01:25:16
◼
►
It's never really gonna be.
01:25:17
◼
►
We don't really want it to be our primary job.
01:25:19
◼
►
So it makes sense to have it be this thing
01:25:22
◼
►
that maybe we can still do for fun,
01:25:24
◼
►
but neither of us, both of us had a conversation
01:25:28
◼
►
where we were sort of like,
01:25:29
◼
►
liftoff's kind of at the bottom of the list.
01:25:31
◼
►
And I said, I think I said to Steven,
01:25:32
◼
►
Steven, the real reason I do liftoff
01:25:34
◼
►
is that I like talking about space with you
01:25:36
◼
►
every other week.
01:25:37
◼
►
And he said, same.
01:25:38
◼
►
And then two weeks later, he came back to me and he said,
01:25:40
◼
►
let's not do liftoff anymore.
01:25:42
◼
►
So, which I think is the right call.
01:25:46
◼
►
And it's sad because people liked it,
01:25:48
◼
►
but it doesn't really fit for so many reasons
01:25:51
◼
►
what we want to do. And I had that moment where you decide to do it and I'm like, oh my god,
01:25:55
◼
►
that burden has just lifted. It's just because it was a grind and it was less fun because it was a
01:26:05
◼
►
grind. So I'm happy to be done with it. And then the other big one is the incomparable where I
01:26:10
◼
►
am two things there. I hired basically an editor to edit both the incomparable and downstream,
01:26:17
◼
►
the new podcast that I started, somebody else is going to edit those. I take so much pride in being
01:26:23
◼
►
a podcast editor, but I don't need to edit those. I take pride in it. I take pride in having
01:26:32
◼
►
editorial oversight and being like, "I can fix this thing and I can fix this thing."
01:26:37
◼
►
I need to not. I need to not do that. I need to just hand that off. That's something other people
01:26:41
◼
►
people can do just fine, and I don't need to be involved.
01:26:45
◼
►
And then in terms of hosting the Incomparable,
01:26:47
◼
►
I got to the point, and I talk about this in great detail
01:26:50
◼
►
on our year-end episode, I have exhausted,
01:26:54
◼
►
'cause if you think about it,
01:26:56
◼
►
I've been doing that podcast for 11 years, it's weekly.
01:26:59
◼
►
Every episode has me on it, essentially,
01:27:04
◼
►
almost 600 episodes.
01:27:05
◼
►
And that means I have to come,
01:27:09
◼
►
having read a book or books, seen a movie or movies,
01:27:12
◼
►
watched a whole season or seasons of a TV show,
01:27:15
◼
►
read a whole graphic novel, whatever it is,
01:27:18
◼
►
I have to have done the homework
01:27:20
◼
►
and nobody else has to do the homework every week
01:27:23
◼
►
'cause it's a rotating panel.
01:27:24
◼
►
And I cheated by using stuff that I'd like already read
01:27:28
◼
►
or already seen for a long time.
01:27:30
◼
►
But a few years ago I ran out of ways to cheat.
01:27:34
◼
►
So it was really a grind.
01:27:37
◼
►
The homework was a grind.
01:27:39
◼
►
having to have a new thing that I had to watch or read
01:27:41
◼
►
or whatever every week.
01:27:43
◼
►
And then I would have to schedule a panel
01:27:46
◼
►
and host an episode and then edit the episode myself.
01:27:50
◼
►
And so I got an editor to edit it
01:27:52
◼
►
and I committed to only doing an episode every other week.
01:27:57
◼
►
So cutting the frequency back.
01:28:00
◼
►
It will be more than that
01:28:01
◼
►
because there are times of the year
01:28:02
◼
►
where my desire to consume media is a massive failure.
01:28:07
◼
►
is a match with the schedule, and, you know,
01:28:12
◼
►
TV shows are finishing up and all that,
01:28:14
◼
►
and I want to talk about them.
01:28:15
◼
►
But there are going to be other weeks where I just --
01:28:17
◼
►
I'm not committing to releasing an episode on the off weeks.
01:28:20
◼
►
I'm hoping my panelists are going to step up
01:28:22
◼
►
and fill those weeks with stuff that they're interested in.
01:28:25
◼
►
And it's like, finally, they'll be able to talk about video games
01:28:27
◼
►
that I'm never going to find the time to play.
01:28:30
◼
►
But I have this realization that the comment from listeners
01:28:34
◼
►
that made me the crankiest about the incomparable
01:28:37
◼
►
was people asking us to cover things.
01:28:39
◼
►
And they made me angry.
01:28:42
◼
►
And I thought, well, why am I so angry about this?
01:28:44
◼
►
And I was angry about it mostly because I think people
01:28:47
◼
►
don't understand how much work goes into homework.
01:28:52
◼
►
They'd be like, well, why don't you talk about this show?
01:28:55
◼
►
It's like, oh, it's 10 episodes.
01:28:58
◼
►
So I need to watch, you're basically assigning me
01:29:01
◼
►
a whole TV show that I have not chosen to watch,
01:29:04
◼
►
but I'm going to have to watch it for homework.
01:29:07
◼
►
And I have to find other people
01:29:09
◼
►
who are also willing to do the homework
01:29:12
◼
►
so that we can have that conversation.
01:29:13
◼
►
And it's a lot, whatever it is.
01:29:15
◼
►
Read this book, watch this movie.
01:29:17
◼
►
So I'm hoping that by not editing those episodes
01:29:22
◼
►
and only committing to doing about half,
01:29:24
◼
►
it'll be more than that, it'll probably be in the 30s,
01:29:26
◼
►
that it will be a more reasonable workload for me
01:29:31
◼
►
because what I don't want to have happen
01:29:33
◼
►
is have it burn me out to the point
01:29:36
◼
►
where I don't want to do it anymore.
01:29:37
◼
►
- That would be terrible and sad.
01:29:39
◼
►
- Yeah, I want to keep it going.
01:29:42
◼
►
And I have so many panelists now that I'm hopeful,
01:29:46
◼
►
this goes back to the thing
01:29:48
◼
►
that we were saying before the show,
01:29:50
◼
►
I'm hopeful that those other off-week episodes
01:29:54
◼
►
will be filled.
01:29:55
◼
►
I might need to tap somebody to be the scheduler of those,
01:30:00
◼
►
to sort of prod everyone,
01:30:02
◼
►
'cause I don't wanna do it, but somebody might,
01:30:05
◼
►
we may need somebody to like prod them
01:30:07
◼
►
so that there's, that those off week episodes are filled,
01:30:11
◼
►
if I really wanna do that.
01:30:12
◼
►
I'm still thinking about that one.
01:30:15
◼
►
I'm not quite sure how it's gonna go.
01:30:17
◼
►
But I mean, last year I put in some skip weeks
01:30:19
◼
►
for the incomparable 'cause I just couldn't take it.
01:30:21
◼
►
So there were like three or four that I was just like,
01:30:23
◼
►
we're not doing an episode.
01:30:24
◼
►
It wasn't even that many, it was like two.
01:30:26
◼
►
I was like, we're not doing an episode this week.
01:30:28
◼
►
I'm going on vacation.
01:30:29
◼
►
I'm not doubling up in advance
01:30:31
◼
►
in order to cover when I'm on vacation.
01:30:32
◼
►
we're just gonna skip an episode.
01:30:33
◼
►
And I had that moment where I thought,
01:30:34
◼
►
okay, I need to make this happen regularly.
01:30:37
◼
►
- You could skip way more of them, imagine that.
01:30:39
◼
►
- Yeah, exactly right.
01:30:40
◼
►
And the fact is, I just went through this last two weeks,
01:30:45
◼
►
because we'd recorded our clip show episode in advance
01:30:50
◼
►
and all of that, where I had two weeks where the weeks
01:30:53
◼
►
and the weekend had no incomparable work on it.
01:30:56
◼
►
And let me tell you, the incomparable comes from a time
01:30:58
◼
►
when I worked in a job Monday through Friday.
01:31:01
◼
►
And even though I don't do that anymore
01:31:03
◼
►
and now I'm at home Monday through Friday,
01:31:05
◼
►
I still always edited the incomparable on Saturday.
01:31:08
◼
►
And let's just say my wife was like,
01:31:14
◼
►
it's better that you don't have that thing hovering over us
01:31:19
◼
►
on the weekend.
01:31:22
◼
►
So, it's already good.
01:31:25
◼
►
- It's not just affecting you, right?
01:31:27
◼
►
No, I mean, it was every Saturday we'd be like,
01:31:29
◼
►
what are we doing this weekend?
01:31:30
◼
►
I'd say, "Well, I gotta edit the incomparable."
01:31:32
◼
►
I was like, "I can't do that anymore."
01:31:33
◼
►
It has had side effects,
01:31:35
◼
►
and I know you and I have talked about this.
01:31:38
◼
►
There are side effects.
01:31:39
◼
►
So not editing your show and having someone else do it,
01:31:44
◼
►
it does, if you're on the show,
01:31:49
◼
►
you can take notes about what needs to be fixed.
01:31:51
◼
►
If you're not on the show, you can't.
01:31:53
◼
►
If you're handing it off to an editor,
01:31:55
◼
►
what you really want to do ideally is give them a heads up.
01:31:59
◼
►
here are the issues, here's what to look for,
01:32:01
◼
►
here's what I want you to change, right?
01:32:04
◼
►
It's not just like, good luck, whatever.
01:32:06
◼
►
I want, if I took pride in editing podcasts
01:32:09
◼
►
because I wanted to do what I wanted to do with them
01:32:11
◼
►
to make them sound exactly like I wanted,
01:32:13
◼
►
okay, maybe too perfection-y,
01:32:15
◼
►
I'm not gonna get that from a different editor,
01:32:17
◼
►
but what I can do is commit to taking better notes
01:32:21
◼
►
and giving those notes to the editor,
01:32:23
◼
►
so I can say, there's a problem here,
01:32:25
◼
►
and I'd like you to do this.
01:32:27
◼
►
So that is a burden that I'm willing to take on
01:32:30
◼
►
that's new for me after 10 years,
01:32:33
◼
►
where I relied on my own brain to do this.
01:32:36
◼
►
I actually spent a day last week,
01:32:39
◼
►
'cause I sent you the link to it when I was done,
01:32:42
◼
►
building a thing that makes it easier for me to take notes
01:32:47
◼
►
about my podcasts as I'm doing them.
01:32:50
◼
►
And that work I put in because I know that I'm, right,
01:32:53
◼
►
It's like I'm letting go of this big job,
01:32:57
◼
►
but I am creating a new little job for myself
01:33:00
◼
►
that I need to do.
01:33:00
◼
►
But it unlocks all of this time.
01:33:04
◼
►
So it's worth making a change to my process upfront
01:33:08
◼
►
so that I can get that time back on the backside.
01:33:11
◼
►
- Or the other thing that you do with an edit,
01:33:13
◼
►
which I do on a couple of my shows,
01:33:16
◼
►
is can I just trust them to get it right?
01:33:20
◼
►
- Oh yeah, there's trust involved regardless.
01:33:23
◼
►
But what I did, you know, is build this, you know, build this note-taking
01:33:30
◼
►
thing that's like a note-taking script. That is me trying to find a way to
01:33:40
◼
►
kind of like make it easier on me to hand it off, right? Because like I
01:33:49
◼
►
I don't want to hand it off with nothing.
01:33:51
◼
►
I know I need to say there's a swear there.
01:33:56
◼
►
I thought about building a version of it.
01:33:58
◼
►
The version I've got, there's two buttons on my stream deck and one of them just puts
01:34:01
◼
►
down a time code and the other one puts down a time code with a note.
01:34:03
◼
►
It asks you to type in a note and you hit return and it gets added to the page.
01:34:07
◼
►
I thought about doing a version that's literally like a menu of show me in which way the panelists
01:34:14
◼
►
And it's like they swore there was a bad sound in the background
01:34:18
◼
►
There was an interruption
01:34:21
◼
►
Like I thought about doing that and I may yet do that like just like the quick quick like which which crime was committed here
01:34:28
◼
►
But that's that gives me a little bit more comfort in handing it off, right?
01:34:33
◼
►
It's still not the same right as having complete control
01:34:36
◼
►
But it is enough
01:34:40
◼
►
for me to feel like I can hand it off without,
01:34:43
◼
►
you know, it's control freaks giving up control.
01:34:45
◼
►
Like it is totally that.
01:34:46
◼
►
I have complete editorial control
01:34:49
◼
►
and I take great pride in that
01:34:51
◼
►
and I can't do that anymore.
01:34:52
◼
►
So I'm trying to find a way
01:34:53
◼
►
to exert a little bit of editorial discretion
01:34:56
◼
►
without having the complete control over it.
01:34:59
◼
►
'Cause I know I just can't do that anymore.
01:35:01
◼
►
- Well, I'll say real quick, if people will permit me to,
01:35:05
◼
►
if you have enjoyed this conversation,
01:35:07
◼
►
this is very similar to the kinds of conversations
01:35:10
◼
►
we have on Upgrade Plus. I feel like, like in its tone, throughout the year, yeah that's
01:35:14
◼
►
true. We touch on these kinds of things quite a lot. We actually have a little bit more
01:35:19
◼
►
of this conversation in today's Upgrade Plus. If you haven't signed up, go to getupgradeplus.com,
01:35:24
◼
►
$5 a month or $50 a year, we'd really appreciate your support. You get a bunch of bonuses,
01:35:29
◼
►
which is also longer ad-free episodes of the show.
01:35:33
◼
►
Yeah, that's another thing that I'm doing on the incomparable, is I'm taking the Upgrade
01:35:37
◼
►
plus model and I'm building and having my editor build a special edition, I'm calling
01:35:42
◼
►
it of incomparable with the extra stuff and no ads and all of that too. So that's on my
01:35:47
◼
►
list of things for the for this year. So overall I would say my retrospective theme that is
01:35:55
◼
►
not a thing for 2021 was learning some new stuff, was trying to go outside my comfort
01:36:03
◼
►
zone and learning some new stuff.
01:36:04
◼
►
You did do a lot of that, didn't you?
01:36:07
◼
►
Yeah, the Python thing.
01:36:08
◼
►
So my son signed up for an Advanced Placement Computer Principles class that they said he'll
01:36:14
◼
►
be writing in Python.
01:36:15
◼
►
I thought, well, that's really exciting.
01:36:17
◼
►
Maybe I should learn Python.
01:36:19
◼
►
And I don't know what he's learning in it.
01:36:22
◼
►
He's done a semester of it and I mentioned about string coercion.
01:36:26
◼
►
And he was like, I don't know what that is.
01:36:27
◼
►
I'm like, how have you not learned that yet?
01:36:29
◼
►
But I have opinions about Python now because I spent a lot of time using Python, doing
01:36:34
◼
►
new Mac shortcuts as well.
01:36:37
◼
►
I got a Stream Deck Mini in the spring, six buttons, because I was very skeptical about
01:36:42
◼
►
the Stream Deck, but I thought, "I'll try this thing."
01:36:44
◼
►
And in a classic Snell fashion, where you buy the cheap one because you think you're
01:36:49
◼
►
probably not going to want it.
01:36:51
◼
►
And then you go, "Oh, actually I'm now convinced that this is good."
01:36:56
◼
►
We did the classic, Stephen Hackett bought a Stream Deck XL.
01:37:00
◼
►
I bought his Stream Deck and I sold my Stream Deck Mini to a friend who is going to take
01:37:07
◼
►
It's the circle of life.
01:37:08
◼
►
And then that friend will realize that they want a regular sized Stream Deck and buy that.
01:37:13
◼
►
It'll all just keep going like that.
01:37:15
◼
►
It's multi-level marketing is what it is.
01:37:16
◼
►
It is sort of shaped like a pyramid.
01:37:18
◼
►
Anyway, I embraced that too because it fits in with a lot of my automation stuff.
01:37:24
◼
►
the new Stream Deck fits kind of to the side of my keyboard.
01:37:27
◼
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It's actually really nice to have those buttons
01:37:30
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that are icons.
01:37:32
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My argument against the Stream Deck was always,
01:37:37
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why do I need any kind of macro pad
01:37:40
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if I can just do Command + Shift + Control + 9 or whatever?
01:37:43
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And the answer is 'cause you never remember those things.
01:37:46
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And then the one time you need it
01:37:48
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that it's supposed to grease the skids
01:37:49
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and make your life easier to have a keyboard shortcut,
01:37:51
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It doesn't happen enough often enough
01:37:53
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for it to be muscle memory.
01:37:54
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So you sit there going, is it command control one?
01:37:57
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Is it command shift one?
01:37:58
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And it's like the moment passes
01:38:00
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and you're not saving time doing automation.
01:38:03
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And now it's a button that is an icon
01:38:07
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that you can put on it that does the thing.
01:38:09
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Like the other day I realized I would use launch bar
01:38:13
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to open terminal and then SSH to my server.
01:38:16
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And I thought, or I could put the SSH command on a button.
01:38:21
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So when I press the button,
01:38:22
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terminal opens already SSHed into my server.
01:38:25
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It's like, oh yeah, okay.
01:38:28
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Like all of those things.
01:38:29
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So more automation, learning Python,
01:38:32
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I really kind of cracked open the data files
01:38:34
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on my weather station,
01:38:36
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which has allowed me to upgrade my weather station,
01:38:40
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which I love.
01:38:41
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It's fun, but also I like having the power over that.
01:38:46
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It's giving me problems that I have to learn how to do,
01:38:49
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solve in Python, that is fun.
01:38:51
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And also it's allowing me to improve a thing
01:38:53
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that I can't improve.
01:38:55
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Like the app gives me what it gives me,
01:38:57
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but now I can break it apart even further than I used to be.
01:39:02
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I used to use PHP to break apart some of the output
01:39:05
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of the weather station and do some custom things.
01:39:08
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And now I have these Python scripts that I can run
01:39:11
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It's very fun for me to do that.
01:39:13
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And the first Python project I did was actually automating
01:39:16
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the Six Colors newsletter.
01:39:17
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►
So it was an actual work thing that I applied it to.
01:39:19
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So that is in hindsight kind of the big thing for 21 for me,
01:39:24
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was challenging my brain to do some new stuff
01:39:31
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and think in some new ways, which are kind of old ways.
01:39:35
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►
It definitely brought me back to back when I was a teenager
01:39:38
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and learning to program in basic and stuff like that,
01:39:42
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►
but at a whole other level.
01:39:43
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►
And after kind of hacking around with JavaScript
01:39:47
◼
►
for widgets and stuff in 2020 using Scriptable,
01:39:51
◼
►
which is fine, but like JavaScript is frustrating
01:39:55
◼
►
and hacking around in 2019 with PHP
01:39:59
◼
►
for Six Colors WordPress themes.
01:40:02
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►
In '21, I did Python because I wanted to,
01:40:05
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►
and I liked it and I'm glad I did it.
01:40:07
◼
►
So just trying to keep my brain plastic
01:40:09
◼
►
and learning new things and applying all of that
01:40:13
◼
►
to other automation stuff and shortcuts
01:40:15
◼
►
and Stream Deck and all of that kind of stuff.
01:40:17
◼
►
A lot of fun.
01:40:18
◼
►
So that in hindsight,
01:40:20
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►
I'm actually pretty happy with the changes that I made
01:40:23
◼
►
and the things I learned in 2021.
01:40:25
◼
►
That's what I was going for.
01:40:26
◼
►
- All right, thank you for listening to this,
01:40:29
◼
►
I think very special New Year's edition of Upgrade.
01:40:33
◼
►
Ask Upgrade will be back next week.
01:40:35
◼
►
If you'd like to send in a question for us
01:40:37
◼
►
to answer on the show,
01:40:37
◼
►
just send out a tweet with the hashtag #AskUpgrade
01:40:39
◼
►
or use question mark AskUpgrade
01:40:41
◼
►
in the Relay FM members Discord.
01:40:42
◼
►
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, next time, next time.
01:40:45
◼
►
Please, please rescind the lasers.
01:40:47
◼
►
- No, the lasers, if you don't shoot the lasers off
01:40:49
◼
►
every so often, they break.
01:40:51
◼
►
- They just explode.
01:40:52
◼
►
- So those lasers were just released into the cosmos.
01:40:54
◼
►
- And then we didn't do it last time,
01:40:55
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►
so it does make sense that you did that.
01:40:57
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►
- Yeah. - It was probably
01:40:58
◼
►
for the best. - Yeah.
01:40:59
◼
►
- Thank you so much to Bombas, Fitbud, and DoorDash
01:41:03
◼
►
for their support of this week's episode.
01:41:05
◼
►
Thank you for listening.
01:41:06
◼
►
Thank you if you are a member and support the show too.
01:41:09
◼
►
We really, really appreciate that.
01:41:10
◼
►
If you want to find Jason online,
01:41:12
◼
►
you can go to sixcolors.com,
01:41:13
◼
►
is @jasonell on Twitter, JSNEELL. I am @imike, I am Y-K-E. I would very much like it if you
01:41:21
◼
►
would take a look at the Theme System Journal. Go to themesystem.com and you can find out
01:41:25
◼
►
a little bit more about what that is. Some of this conversation today has been of interest
01:41:29
◼
►
to you. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell.
01:41:35
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►
- Goodbye, everybody.
01:41:36
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[MUSIC PLAYING]
01:41:39
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[MUSIC PLAYING]